2025 Class
The 2025 Appalachian Trail Hall of Fame class honorees are Richard B. Anderson of Camden, Maine; the late Walter Greene of New York City, New York, the late Marion Park of Washington, DC, and Ronald Tipton of Rockville, Maryland.
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We all know that the Appalachian Trail starts in northern Georgia and proceeds through fourteen states and ends in central Maine. The A.T. generally follows the spine of the Appalachian Mountains. But where do the Appalachian Mountains begin and end. That is a more complicated question to answer, especially if you consider some of the very ancient historical evidence.
Around 200 million years ago, most of Earth’s surface was sort of smooshed together into a super continent called Pangea. At the places where the tectonic plates came together a mountain range was formed. Geologists call this the Central Pangean Range. Take a look at this graphic which is courtesy of the site Atlas Pro. Along the range you see the present-day U.S., a bit of Africa, Canada, Greenland and Great Britain. What does this look like to you? It’s the Appalachian Mountain Range, plus some more. In 1993, Richard Anderson, the Commissioner of the Maine Department of Conservation, got an idea. Since the mountains in these countries had once been part of the same range, why not put together a trail that links these mountains? Dick, with the help of other Maine conservationists, including Don Hudson, developed a plan to create just such a trail connecting Maine’s Katahdin to Mont Carleton in New Brunswick and then on to Mount Jacques Cartier in Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula. On Earth Day, April 22, 1994, the proposal to build a hiking trail through the northern Appalachian Mountains was announced at a news conference in Portland, Maine. That idea became the International Appalachian Trail. Since then, this mission has been embraced in Greenland and Iceland and across the arc of the North Atlantic to Europe and North Africa. The IAT now comprises 23 Chapters on three continents from Maine to Morocco. Progress to maintain and improve the trail experience continues in work with landowners, hikers, conservation organizations, and local, regional and national governments. We applaud this as a logical extension of Benton MacKaye’s concept of a trail linking the Appalachians in the U.S. |
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Before Myron Avery went to Maine, there was Walter Greene. Greene laid out the trail route in northern part of Maine and did some of the first trail construction. He was a Broadway actor who spent most of his summers in Maine. Greene was the first President of the Maine Appalachian Trail Club. He and Avery met by chance near Katahdin around 1930. During the summer of 1932, Walter Greene made several trips into 120 miles of woods between Katahdin and Blanchard to work out a route for the Trail and began to scout and blaze the route across the formidable Barren-Chairback Range.
The original route of the A.T. from Katahdin to Blanchard was due more to his scouting than that of anyone else. He joined the famous Avery/Schairer/Philbrick/Jackson expedition of 1933 that blazed the Trail from Katahdin to the West Branch of the Pleasant River and then led the group from there to Blanchard. He continued to explore and refine the route during 1934. In 1935 Greene accomplished a lot through interaction with the Civilian Conservation Corps crews who were building much of the new A.T. and also the critical cable bridge across the West Branch of the Penobscot River. He spent the winter of 1936 making 40 of the signs to be used on the new route. His health began to fail late in the year and he was hospitalized in New York in November. After a long battle with colon cancer he passed away in 1941. He's not well known today because he accomplished so much within just a five-year period and because he died so young. |
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Picture a group of men in suits, just off work from their mostly government day jobs, sitting around a wood-paneled study, talking Trail. Sitting on the floor taking notes is Marion Park, who joined the Potomac A.T. Club in 1933 and helped edit its early newsletter. Then in 1941 she replaced Harlean James as secretary of ATC, whom she had assisted since 1937. Marion served in that position until 1955.
What did that mean in those days? It meant keeping records of all the ATC (and cross-over PATC) meetings and often going out in the field with speed-hiker Myron Avery, taking notes as he measured and noted deficiencies at the same time. The accuracy of those notes endures and was essential to the organization’s governance, guidebooks, and maps in its first three decades. In addition, she was Treasurer of the Maine Appalachian Trail Club from 1937-1957. On top of that, she and Jean Stephenson maintained a side trail to the A.T. from the Meadow Spring and Buck Hollow trails in Shenandoah. Every organization needs a Marion Park at its quiet center to keep it grounded, without recognition, documenting decisions and plans and doing all of the things essential to its success. |
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Ron Tipton can be called an Appalachian Trail lifer. Ron joined the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club in 1974, starting a lifelong association with the Appalachian Trail hiking and volunteer communities. He served on the club’s Land Acquisition and Conservation Committee for years and maintained a section of the A.T. in Virginia for more than 20 years. In the 1970s, Ron was one of many key individuals who worked behind the scenes in Washington to advocate, promote, and lobby for permanent protection of the Trail – a quest that ultimately succeeded when Congress approved the Appalachian Trail amendments to the National Trails System Act that authorized $90 million for acquiring land to protect the Trail.
He then accepted an assignment from the National Park Service lands office to use his hike of the entire Appalachian Trail to prepare a report on priorities for protection of the Trail. Ron continued his association and involvement with the A.T. through the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, serving on the ATC Board of Directors from 1981 to 1985 and as one of the founders of the Appalachian Long Distance Hikers Association. During his 14-year tenure on senior staff for the Wilderness Society and subsequent 14 years on staff at the National Parks Conservation Association, he worked with ATC and the Trail clubs to secure annual funding for protecting and managing the Trail, including funding for major land acquisition projects in Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, New York, and Maine. In 2013, Appalachian Trail Conservancy was in a difficult place. The CEO who was hired to replace the irreplaceable Dave Startzell had not worked out well. Luckily, the ATC Board made an excellent choice this time and selected Ron. His skills and experience in nonprofit organizational management and fundraising were acutely needed for the furtherance of the Appalachian Trail project. Ron stabilized the organization, reconnected its strong relationships with the 31 Trail clubs and dozens of agency partners, and raised more private and foundation money for the Conservancy than anyone in its history. After he “retired” in 2018, he continued his work on the Appalachian Trail Landscape Conservation Initiative. He’s also become an active member of the Board for the Partnership for the National Trails System, the leading voice for the 32 National Scenic and Historic Trails across the country. And we won’t leave out the work he’s done for the A.T. Museum, such as serving on the Hall of Fame selection committee. |