Original Trail

[dmperkins74]

Hey y'all,

I've been wondering how much of the trail is original trail. Anybody know of a good site that tells about that?

dp

[WIAPilot]

Good question!

[Old Hiker]

The original Trail. Photos don't lie!

http://whiteblaze.net/forum/vbg/show...?i=51587&c=514

[ki0eh]

Marty Dominy in GA was trying to tabulate all the reroutes through the years on paper maps. I do not know whether that has been or is being digitized.

[Spirit Walker]

In 1988 I was told that Maine was 75% relocated from the original routes. I'm sure there have been changes since.

[CrumbSnatcher]

In 1988 I was told that Maine was 75% relocated from the original routes. I'm sure there have been changes since.

the trail used to roll right thru alot of the towns in maine i believe, like before the rattle river shelter, i believe the carter-moriah trail that goes right into gorham NH. was the old AT(i could be wrong?)
thers a blue blaze trail going north out of gorham too that was AT? i have hiked a few old brown blazes in virginia(alot of old road walks) alot of sections are on thier 3rd routes, some sections have multiple routes, that they revert (change back too) to after a few years of wear and tear.
i consider brown blazing the older routes were you see the blaze fading back to the original brown on tress,light poles,etc...

[CrumbSnatcher]

trail probably went thru 1,000 towns back when most of it was a road walk :-)
i could be total-ly wrong about everything and so me know too

[Monkeywrench]

In Connecticut the trail used to make a loop around Macedonia Brook State Park. It also crossed the Housatonic at Cornwall Bridge and went up Dark Entry Ravine (next to the General Store) past the remains of Dudleytown, and headed east through Mohawk State Forest then cut north through Cathedral Pines before swinging west again.

In Vermont the Long Trail used a lot of low-land routings in its first iteration before being moved up onto the ridges. Exactly where they were in that process when the AT came into being and started sharing the route, I do not know.

Until the 70's in Vermont the trail went along the south shore of Stratton Pond then west to Bourne Pond along what is now the Lye Brook Trail, then headed north on what is now the Branch Pond Trail. Nowadays the LT/At heads northand west from the east end of Stratton Pond and avoids the Lye Brook Wilderness entirely. Also, the current route up the south side of Stratton Mountain is different than the original (and in the interim it was moved off Stratton Mountain entirely, and used what is now the Stratton Pond Trail.)

Once the NTSA came into being and the federal gov't started buying up a permanent right-of-way, I think a lot more relocations came into being as well.

My guess is only a very small percentage of the trail is still on its original alignment.

[Rain Man]

Somehow makes me imagine the reaction I'd get if I went to my bank and asked for my exact dollar bills back, which I had deposited when young.

RainMan

.

[WingedMonkey]

I don't see how there could be an "original trail" unless you pick a certain year and try to determine where the trail was that year. There are certainly many places where the trail once went and no longer does. As the actual land rights come under ownership of the big bad evil federal government the actual right of way will certainly shrink.

The friends I stay with in Massachusetts would always tell me stories of the trail going across their property and the occasional lost hiker they would meet. I took it as just a story until I came across old white blazes on rocks in their woods. Seems paint last a lot longer on rock than trees.

I use the path now to get to the official trail almost a mile away.

[LIhikers]

I believe, but could very well be wrong, that where the trail goes through the Bear Mountain Zoo is part of the "original" AT

[lemon b]

Kinda doubt anyone could have kept track of all the changes over the years. Was looking at a few 1995 photos I have and can tell the trail used to go left and now goes right in one for sure.

[WIAPilot]

Surely, the ATC has a map of the original route that was walked by Avery in 1936? Because the trail had to be rerouted before it was even built. But I would think "original" would be the first path walked by Avery, although it wasn't a thru.

It would be interesting to see how it changed even to when Shaffer walked it in 1948.

[Jim Adams]

I noticed about 250 miles of different trail between my 1990 and 2002 thru hikes.

geek

[Hikerhead]

Va has to be the king of the Reroute. At one time it didn't go near Mt Rogers, then another time it went OVER Mt Rogers, now it goes very near Mt Rogers. The time it didn't go near Mt Rogers it was on the Iron Mtn trail, one mtn to the north. It then went to the New River, then to Galax, then to the BR Parkway to Poor Mtn and dropped down and crossed Rt 460 north of Salem to get on Catawba Mtn, I don't believe back then that it went over Dragons Tooth. Before they built the lodge and lake at the Peaks of Otter it went thru there also. And then it was the giant reroute all through SNP when the parkway was laid on top of the AT.

[Hikerhead]

And at one time when the trail got on top of Big Walker it stayed on that ridgeline heading north, not sure where it went from there. I imagine the I-77 tunnel had something to do with that reroute. Now you go over it and drop down and head for Chestnut Mtn.

[dmperkins74]

I guess I should be glad that most of these reroutes occur, as they are usually for good reasons and improve the trail, but it's a bit sad to think I may not be setting foot on ANY original trail our there perhaps.

[Another Kevin]

The Trail is a living thing. There are a number of sections that need to be relocated every few years - sometimes back to an eighty-year-old alignment - simply to let the land recover. Trails, even ones with good waterbars and proper grades, erode over time. Even in the best of circumstances, the difference between a trail and a stream is often that the trail has a few more bootprints and the stream has a few more trout. On top of that, most of the "original" Trail was roadwalk. It took a long time to negotiate land use and construct an off-road treadway. But you'll be setting foot on the original Trail thousands of times, because the continually-relocated sections cross and recross, and some points of interest (ranging in elevation from the Mount Washington summit to the Bear Mountain zoo) stay on the Trail perennially.

I live in a part of the country that has been continuously settled since the seventeenth century. Centuries-old roads are still easily traced on the map, but a good many of them are now perennial streams in spots. The erosion has made them the easiest conduits, and they now flow with water year-round, with humanity's wheeled traffic now rolling elsewhere.

There are other long trails that have an even stranger history of relocation. The New York Long Path was originally envisioned not as a continuously blazed trail, but rather a catalogue of points of interest. A hiker would find his own way from one to the next, using whatever highways, woods roads and trails that the terrain offered. Roughly the southern half of the path eventually had to be blazed and protected from the encroachments of suburbia, and the Orange County section is pretty well lost. It's now all roadwalk, and opportunities to camp are few. For that reason, there's an approved alternative through northern New Jersey. The hiker leaves the Long Path in Harriman Park, proceeds west on the AT almost to High Point, New Jersey, and then north on the Shawangunk Ridge to rejoin the Long Path past the worst of the problem section. (For a good many miles, "trail north" on the Long Path is "trail south" on the AT.) From Altamont north, the Long Path reverts to being a catalog of landmarks, although the guidebook offers a suggested roadwalk to get the hiker safely through the Mohawk Valley.

Sorry, I digress. To me it's an astonishingly cool idea that (with considerable homework to line up shelter opportunities in the early part) a hiker can put on a backpack in Manhattan and walk out of New York City, with a destination in the Adirondack High Peaks. Back to the topic: Roads and trails are living things. They all get relocated over time.

[Odd Man Out]

I find the trail's history interesting and have been following this thread. It seems to be well established that most of the trail is not original and that this is not unexpected. But, can anyone suggest a section of trail (even a small part) that IS original, or at least has not been rerouted in a very long time?

[tdoczi]

I find the trail's history interesting and have been following this thread. It seems to be well established that most of the trail is not original and that this is not unexpected. But, can anyone suggest a section of trail (even a small part) that IS original, or at least has not been rerouted in a very long time?

the crawford path, and other trails in the whites, pre date the AT itself, by a long stretch, and are now part of the AT (to us anyway, many other people dont even know the AT is there and will always think of them by their original names). i suppose that doesnt mean they couldnt have been re routed but its hard to imagine where youd even re route most of the crawford path to if you wanted to.