Hawk Mountain Shelter On Georgia AT To Be Torn Down

[Pedaling Fool]

In slavery times, groups of young white men, sons of the plantation owners , would patrol the roads at night on horseback looking for runaways . In the dialect of the times, these groups of patrollers were called the "paddy rollers" by the slaves.

And now you know, where the term "paddy" in paddy wagon came from. In fact, the very act of policing and patrolling as we know it, started with policing the slaves. Which carries over into the historic distrust and fear of police black people still have today. Some things change slowly.


Many people wont go 1/2 mile off the AT for a shelter, darn sure not a campsite.
Sometimes I think trail clubs....just like to build new trail and change things


The concept of the shelters IS to overuse them. Its called concentrated impact. You preserve other areas, by sacrificing some.

...On a side note, the term Paddy comes from the Irish. Paddy wagons were the police wagons who were mainly Irish in many towns in the late 1800's (and later).

The police in the US evolved out of slave / minority patrollers, that were called Paddy rollers , long before the irish terminology came into being in the 20th century. As far back as 1704. The term paddy used for police patrols here predates any references to irish policemen or immigrants by about 150- 200 years.

This is interesting, I too thought the term paddy had its origins in Irish police. If it did in fact come from slaves then what did the word paddy mean to the slaves, why would they call them paddy rollers?