- excerpt from the Appalachian Trail Conservancy website.

The Appalachian Trail was the “brainchild” of Benton MacKaye—an off-and-on federal employee, educated as a forester and self-trained as a planner, who proposed it as the connecting thread of “a project in regional planning.”

For the complete story, visit www.appalachiantrail.org/about/history/index.html.