Salem Museum in Salem, Virginia

A Hiker’s History of the Appalachian Trail

Thursday September 10, 7pm

Zoom Link HERE

Professor Mills Kelly will discuss his latest book, “A Hiker’s History of the Appalachian Trail.” Rather than offer a narrative from the top-down, Kelly’s book aims to offer a “boots-up” perspective of the Trail’s long, people-oriented history. Working with Trail shelter registers, hiker accounts submitted to Trail clubs, and newspaper and magazine stories about the experiences of casual hikers, Kelly reveals what it was like to hike the Trail from the late 1920s through the early 2020s by answering questions such as: What did hikers eat? What kind of gear did they carry? What was their relationship to the natural world they found along the Trail? What was it like to hike as a woman, as a person of color, or as someone with a disability? And how did all those things change over the first 100 years of the Trail’s history? At the conclusion of his talk, copies of the book will be available for purchase and/or signing. A portion of the proceeds from the sale will go to the Salem Museum.

Kelly is an emeritus professor of history at George Mason University and is also the author of “Virginia’s Lost Appalachian Trail,” the story of the single largest reroute (300 miles) of the Trail in its history. In addition to being an author and popular speaker about the Trail’s history, Mills is the archivist of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club, a member of the board of the Appalachian Trail Museum, and the host of the popular podcast “The Green Tunnel.”