All the Appalachian Trails
FAIN: MD-263786-19
George Mason University (Fairfax, VA 22030-4444)
Theodore Mills Kelly (Project Director: June 2018 to September 2021)
Development
of an interactive website tracing the history of the Appalachian Trail and
visualizing the significant changes to the trail.
“All the Appalachian Trails” will provide a new way of making sense of the history of the Appalachian Trail—America’s oldest and most iconic long distance hiking trail. Since its completion in 1937, the Appalachian Trail has been re-routed many times, either to take advantage of more scenic locations, to avoid property disputes with local landowners, or to avoid natural or man made hazards. As a result, the Appalachian Trail walked by hikers today takes a very different route than the trail walked by hikers in 1937. We will be using the most current geospatial techniques, combined with the best practices of digital humanities, to create a free and interactive resource that that allows users to chart, examine, and make sense of the many routes of the Trail over time, and the ways that the history of the Trail and the communities through which it passes have been influenced by historical developments.