The Trail Crew in Appalacia

Appalachia is the journal of the Appalachian Mountain Club, the oldest mountaineering organization in the United States   In this section I have accumulated a number of articles about, or related to, the Trail Crew from the pages of Appalachia.

With The Trail Gang, by Charles W. Blood appeared in June 1929 and is probably the first description of what became the Trail Crew.  It is a chatty introduction to the early organization and duties of the college-age young men who started maintaining AMC trails in 1919.

The old bridle path from Lafayette Place to Eagle Lake was opened in 1852, abandoned after 5 years, reopened in 1897 but soon disappeared through lack of maintenance. In Recovery of the Old Bridle Path on Mt. Lafayette (Appalachia December 1929), Paul R. Jenks describes his effort to rediscover the path as the AMC began building Greenleaf Hut in 1929.

Also in the December 1929 issue, Ralph C Larrabee's The Trail Spree of 1929 provides a humorous account of a few days in the woods with the Trail Crew and the Old Masters.

The June 1931 issue contains an account of building the Webster Cliff Trail 1912-14 by Charles Blood, one of the builders.

A year later (December 1932) Harland P. Sisk provides an account of the history and construction methods used on Trail Bridges.

The Story of the Mahoosuc by Paul Jenks in the December 1933 issue describes the process of laying out and building the Mahoosuc Trail and its side trails during the period 1916-26.  CW Blood, Paul Jenks, and Harland Sisk were all involved with the Trail Crew, and had hands-on participation in trail work, from before the beginning of the college-age crew through the 1930s.

John Hutton, in whose memory Hutton Lodge is named, was on the TC in the late 1930s and was Trail Supervisor for the next several years. In his position as Trail Supervisor he wrote several annual status reports which appeared in Appalachia.  The first of these appeared in December 1939; this described the massive clean-up effort required that summer after the hurricane of 1938, and reported on new shelters at Liberty Spring and Guyot.

The June 1940 issue contained 3 trail reports: the purchase of a permanent Trail Crew residence in Whitefield (CW Blood), summer trail mainenance plans (John Hutton), and "Notes from the 'sign man'" (Paul Jenks).

The hutmen screwed up and burned down Madison Hut late in the summer of 1940, as reported in December 1940 by Charles W. Morse, Councillor of Huts. Meanwhile, John Hutton reported great summer success by the Trail Crew.  In the June 1941 issue John Hutton described the trail maintenance plans for that summer.

One of the big events in 1941 was the "adoption" of several miles of trail around Mt. Katahdin by the AMC Trail Crew. In A Vacation with Pay in the June 1942 issue, the 1941 Trailmaster David S. Lovejoy describes the 2-week Katahdin trip.  These trips went on until at least the 1960's, and I was privileged to be on the 1958 trip as a first year.

Twenty-Five Years of the A.M.C. Trail Crew by Paul Jenks appeared in December 1943. This was a very personal account of Trail Crew history by a man who was continuously involved as Councillor of Trails, Secretary of the Trails Committee, trail sign painter, trail builder, and accomplished woodsman.  Two years later in the June 1945 issue, Paul Jenks authored Five Thousand Trail Signs. This article described the philosophy and the technology of AMC trail signs, along with many personal anecdotes.  Then in the June 1947 Appalachia Paul provided a detailed history of the AMC trail system including the date of each new trail in The A.M.C. Trail System; this article is not directly about the Trail Crew but certainly important to its history.

1951 was the 75th anniversary of the AMC, and a special Anniversary Issue was published in May.  Howard M Goff contributed The Pace of the Grub-Hoe which reviewed the development of the trail system with a little bit of information about maintenance by the Trail Crew.

After a long absence, trails reports resumed in Appalachia in the June 1954 issue with a report on the 1953 Trail Crew activities by Allen B. Folger, Councillor of Trails. The principal 1953 project was rebuilding the Great Gulf Bridge. Folger also wrote a report on the 1954 Trail Crew activities in the June 1955 issue.  A year later the next Councillor of Trails, F. R. Maker had a trails report calling for volunteers to help with the increasing workload.  Folger had never worked on the Trail Crew, but Maker had.

Trail Erosion by CW Blood appeared in the June 1957 issue.  This was primarily an article about how, where,and why to build waterbars.

The December 1957 Appalachia contained two articles about the Trail Crew.  The first, a trail status report by Councillor Maker, reported the construction of a new Ethan Pond Shelter that summer.  The second, An Early AMC Trail Crew by Donald F. Sawyer, recounts anecdotes of three members of the 1920 Trail Crew - Sawyer, Sherman Adams (later Governor of New Hampshire), and Robert Elsasser - who were also members of the Dartmouth Glee Club.  They did a lot of singing  while building a trail over the Kinsmans.

Councillor of Trails Samuel H. Goodhue wrote a trails report for the December 1959 issue describing the new Great Gulf Shelter built that summer.  I was involved in building this shelter, and although Goodhue describes in detail the Forest Service preservative we applied to the shelter, those of us who did the work observed that it didn't seem to stick to, or soak into, the green logs.  I believe Frank von Hippel, the shelter construction boss, later learned that this mixture was intended only for use on seasoned wood.

The A.M.C. Trail Crew 1919-1964 by CW Blood appeared in the June 1964 issue of Appalachia.  This expanded on the article written by Jenks in 1943.  Next year, in the June 1965 issue, Blood authored The Evolution of a Trailman, his own personal story which touched on the Trail Crew occasionally.

Alan S. Thorndike was on Trail Crew 1963-1966 and Trailmaster in 1966. He wrote an article, Trail Crew Thoughts, which appeared in December 1966 telling what it was like to be on Crew at that time.

Two excerpts from the book AMC Field Guide to Trail Design, Construction, and Maintenance by Robert D. Proudman were published in the June 1977 Appalachia. Bob was a Crewman, Trailmaster, and Trails Supervisor in the era when the job of the Trail Crew changed from keeping the trail open to dealing with the environmental issues caused by a huge increase in the number of hikers.

I've included two articles by old Hutmen, not directly relevant to the Trail Crew but illustrating commonalities of life among the college-aged AMC employees. Edward "Moose" Damp wrote Of Mules, Mice, and Madison for the December 1980 issue; in it he described his experiences in the huts in 1939 and the early 40s.  The Green Plate Special and the Rocking Chair Raid by Anthony Macmillan, published in June 1981, updates the life of a Hutman to the early 1960s.  I'll note that after the Trail Crew raided Lakes in 1958 for its "green chair", and again in 1959 for its "brown chair" we were strongly admonished by AMC management that raiding was no longer acceptable for AMC employees, but this article paints a different picture.

Also in the June 1981 issue was a trails report for 1980 and 1981 by Reuben Rajala, Trails Supervisor, and Roger Moore, Trails Coordinator.

Trail Blazers: Opening Up the White Mountains by William Lowell Putnam appeared in December 1987.  This is not about the Trail Crew; it focuses on the trails built during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Finally, the December 1992 issue contained The White Mountain Trail Crew - 75 Years (More or Less) of Service by Paul Moore.  This is the updated Trail Crew history building on the earlier histories by Jenks (1943) and Blood (1964).