"Hey, Hiker!" * * * * * 117 



as long as there is another bend in the trail, are the kind who make work 

 for the "drag out" crew. 



Of course, the confirmed hiker is not satisfied to hit the trail once 

 or twice or three times a year when he can get away for a trip into the 

 high mountains. He seeks out kindred spirits in his own neighborhood 

 and together they explore the trails or country roads near by, and the 

 first thing you know a new trail club has been born. The growth of 

 these trail or mountaineering clubs until every city of importance has 

 at least one and sometimes several would indicate that, the automobile 

 to the contrary notwithstanding, Americans are using their legs for 

 other purposes than to step on the gas. Trail clubs are not new to this 

 generation, of course. The forerunner of them all in America, the 

 Appalachian Club, celebrated its golden anniversary not long ago. 



When you form a club, you've got to have a purpose, with a capital 

 P, as the politicians say. All these trail clubs that dot the United States 

 felt that need, one by one, as they were born. The ideal purpose for a 

 club, as anybody knows who ever started a club, is to save something. 

 It is a happy circumstance that one and all of the trail clubs, looking 

 about, settled upon some bit of wilderness to save. Each club adopted 

 a mountain and mothered it, as it were, with all of its glaciers, forests, 

 streams, and meadows. Thus it has come about that most of the more 

 worth-while mountains of the land have been adopted and saved for pos 

 terity. There are those who don't belong to any trail club and who 

 think that the mountains might have been saved anyway, but this is a 

 matter of doubt and there is no questioning the fact that the various 

 mountaineering and trail clubs have played an important part in crys 

 tallizing public sentiment so that much of our wonderful wilderness 

 could be saved from civilization before it was too late. 



When the Appalachian Club was formed half a century ago by a 

 handful of trail enthusiasts in Boston, it seemed as if the wilderness 

 known as the West never could be swallowed up. Yet within a man's 

 lifetime that almost happened. The Appalachians first turned their 

 attention to the White Mountains, which were then an impenetrable 

 wilderness known to but a few trappers and timber prospectors. The 

 Appalachians mapped the White Mountains and found no connected 

 trail system by which they could tramp for days on end, though there 

 were many short trails leading off from resorts or stations. It was then 

 that the idea of the "Long, Long Trail" was evolved. 



The Appalachians, being both naive and enthusiastic, dug down into 

 their own pockets to pay for the building of a considerable number of 

 connecting trails, joining the short by-paths of the White Mountains 

 into more extensive routes. The public liked the idea and soon many 

 feet were plodding over the trails that were built for the discriminating 



