Benton MacKaye, an environmentalist, conservationist, forester and land planner, is best known as the man who first laid out a vision of the Appalachian Trail. “He was one of America’s great conservationists who had real connections with Massachusetts and the Petersham area,” according to David Foster, director emeritus of Harvard Forest in Petersham.
MacKaye received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1900. “Through that period he became very interested in the environment and nature. He discovered the incredible benefit for his physical and mental health of hiking outside.”
MacKaye graduated from Harvard Forestry School in Cambridge in 1905 and began lecturing at the Harvard Forestry School program in Petersham from 1906-1910, teaching a range of courses, under the director of the program Richard Fisher. In 1910, MacKaye joined the United States Forest Service and continued his career in other federal jobs, according to Foster.
MacKaye, in 1921, published a paper titled, “An Appalachian trail: A Project in Regional Planning,” describing his vision of a trail that would go the length of the Appalachians. “The original plan was to create a trail and protect enough land to basically complete the trail,” Foster stated. “When people began creating the trail, they incorporated places in state or national forests where there were already trails into it. They built a wonderful trail,” said Foster.
MacKaye’s vision, he continued, was that the trail would also become part of a large wilderness area that would stretch up the Appalachians, also benefiting the towns, forestry services and farmers. “He envisioned not only local towns that existed, but that people would also create towns adjacent to it. They would work the farms and take walks; it would be a healthy way to live. He is what we would call today a real progressive. He emphasized people’s health, larger values and environmental values more than financial and industrial values.”
The Appalachian Trail captured people’s imagination, Foster said. “People loved the trail so much … There is now an effort to conserve a lot of land around it, which also was a part of MacKaye’s vision as a corridor of wilderness rather than a trail.”
Harvard Forest is part of that effort. “Wildlands and Woodlands,” written by Foster, started a conservation initiative which resulted in a larger collaboration across New England to conserve forest and farm land. One of the major project initiatives is to conserve the northern part of the Appalachian Trail, through the Northern Appalachian Trail Landscape Partnership, of which Harvard Forest is involved.
MacKaye also became friends with Bob Marshall and through that friendship developed the Wilderness Society, which continues to this day. “It is easy to underestimate how important the starting of the Wilderness Society was. That was a really huge thing. It led to all of the wilderness areas we have in the U.S. today,” Foster said.
MacKaye also developed the only trail based in Massachusetts — the Mass Bay Circuit Trail, a connected set of trails around the greater Boston area.
In Georgia is the 292-mile Benton MacKaye Trail founded by the Benton MacKaye Trail Association in 1980 and completed in 2005. “The Benton MacKaye Trail is a much more primitive trail than the Appalachian Trail. I like to think he (MacKaye) would have liked that. He wanted to get people out in the wilderness and wild areas enjoying nature,” said Association President Ken Cissna.
The MacKaye Trail and the Appalachian Trail meet in several areas. “Both trails begin at Springer Mountain in Georgia. The first four or five miles the two trails cross each other three times then go their own separate ways for 200 miles. They meet again at Lake Fontana on the Southeast corner of the Great Smokey Mountain National Park and cross there. The trails meet again in the Northern Terminus at Big Creek at the Smokey Mountain Park which is where the Benton MacKaye Trail ends,” Cessna said.
More information can be found on Harvard Forest at https://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/
More Information on the Wilderness Society can be found at www.wilderness.org
More information can be found at the Benton MacKaye Trail Association can be found at www.bmta.org
Carla Charter is a freelance writer from Phillipston. Her writing focuses on history with a particular interest in the history of the North Quabbin area.