“The Appalachian Mountain Club was organized in Boston in January, 1876, to ‘explore the mountains of New England and the adjacent regions, both for scientific and artistic purposes.’ Its activities are directed not only toward the preservation of the natural beauty of our mountain resorts,—and in particular their forests,—but also toward making them still more accessible and enjoyable through the building of paths and camps, the publishing of maps and guidebooks, the collecting of scientific data, and the conducting of numerous field excursions.

“In the fulfilment of its main purpose it has built and maintained over two hundred miles of trails, three stone huts and nine open log shelters, all in the White Mountains, and a clubhouse on Three Mile Island in Lake Winnepesaukee. It has also acquired sixteen reservations, held purely in trust for the benefit of the public, in New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts. It annually conducts four long excursions: one in February for snowshoeing, one in July, one in August, for those who prefer camp life, and one in early autumn, besides the same number of shorter trips in February, May, early September, and at Christmas. These are mainly in New England and New York. In addition there are Saturday afternoon walks to various points of interest in the country around Boston and New York City, the latter under the New York Chapter. Occasionally there are special walks for those interested in natural history. Those wishing to go farther afield can obtain privileges in connection with the annual outings of the western mountaineering clubs.

“From October to May monthly meetings are held in Boston and to these members may invite friends. In connection with these meetings illustrated lectures are given upon mountain regions and other outdoor subjects of interest.

“Clubrooms are maintained in the Tremont Building [in Boston], where committee meetings and small informal gatherings are held, and where the fine library, many maps, and a large collection of photographs are kept.…

“Members are kept informed of the activities of the Club by a monthly Bulletin, and at least once a year an illustrated magazine, entitled Appalachia, is published.… In addition the Club has published a ‘Guide to Paths in the White Mountains and Adjacent Regions’ ($2.00), a ‘Bibliography of the White Mountains’ ($1.00), ‘Walks and Rides about Boston’ ($1.25), a booklet ‘Equipment for Climbing and Camping’ (10 cents), and a ‘Snowshoe Manual’ (10 cents).

“In January, 1919, there were about 2300 members (the New York Chapter numbers 145). Membership in the Club costs eight dollars for the first year and four dollars a year thereafter. No climbing qualification is necessary, but candidates must be nominated by two club members, to whom they are personally known, and approved by the Committee on Membership. Application blanks and further information may be had by addressing the Corresponding Secretary, 1050 Tremont Building, Boston.”

“The first walking club in America of which any record is found was the little Alpine Club organized by some of the professors at Williamstown, Mass., which came into being about 1863 and went out of being a few years later. But before its demise Mr. and Mrs. Henry E. Buermeyer and William B. (better known as ‘Father Bill’) Curtiss had formed the habit of exploring the wilds of Staten Island or the highlands of the Hudson—there were no developments then, and it was a wilderness—on Sundays. ‘Father Bill’ Curtis was the premier athlete of America and the founder of the New York Athletic Club. Mrs. Buermeyer was one of the first women to ride a bicycle in this country, and Mr. Buermeyer was a noted swimmer.

“This little group constituted the beginnings of the Fresh Air Club, which is today the oldest walking club in New York, and which can alone contest the claim of the Appalachian Mountain Club to the premiership of the United States. Shortly after its foundation the winged-foot organization sent a score of its members on these walks and Mrs. Buermeyer dropped out. Later some members of the old American Athletic Club, in conjunction with others from the Manhattan Athletic Club, developed a walking cult, and for a time pedestrianism seemed destined to become a popular pastime. In this group was E. Berry Wall, whose name is associated with dancing rather than athletics in the minds of the majority of New Yorkers.

“Then interest diminished gradually until each organization furnished but a negligible number of walkers. Followed something in the nature of a renaissance, the two groups consolidated, and the present Fresh Air Club came into being.

“In the early eighties interest in athletics increased, there were organized baseball clubs, tennis clubs, cricket clubs, but for a long period the Fresh Air Club was the only organization devoted to walking, with the exception of the Westchester Walking Club, otherwise known as the Westchester Hare and Hounds (whose members were recruited from the then prosperous but long since defunct Harlem Athletic Club), which rose, flourished, and decayed, leaving its spirit and traditions to be carried by the Fresh Air Club, which in February, 1890, was incorporated.

“What the Appalachian Mountain Club did for New Hampshire the Fresh Air Club did for the country within a fifty-mile radius of New York; there is not a section of northern New Jersey, or of Rockland, Westchester, or Orange County, which has not been explored by some of its members. On Friday of each week during the tramping season ‘Father Bill’ who was official pathfinder, would go over the route of the walk projected for the following Sunday, when necessary blazing a trail, so that the party might proceed without any delay or casting about for the right road, until finally the paths up Storm King, Bear Mountain—there wasn’t any Interstate Park then—Anthony’s Nose, and the highlands of the Hudson became as familiar to him as the path to his own door.…

“Today the Club has about seventy-five members, of whom some forty are active. Its walking season extends from October to December and from March to June, and walks are scheduled for all Sundays and holidays, to a few of which women friends of members are invited. During the winter months skating excursions, when weather conditions are favorable, are substituted for walking. The Fresh Air Club does not seek an increase in membership; in fact, a member remarked to the writer that it did not desire publicity or even a considerable amount of inquiry from would-be candidates for membership. Its bulletin states:

“‘That its constitution, by-laws, and rules have not been, and will not be, published; that it accepts no members who are not good cross-country walkers, and that membership can be obtained only after personal acquaintance and such participation in the excursions of the Club as is needed to prove the candidate’s fitness and ability.… Participation by non-members in the excursions of the Club is by invitation only.’

“As a veracious chronicler it becomes incumbent upon me to here set down that during its long existence of nearly half a century it has exercised practically no influence and has never attained a place in the sun as a constructive factor in the encouragement of general walking, although its object, according to its certificate of incorporation, is the ‘encouragement and promotion of outdoor sport for health and pleasure.’

“The year 1911 was momentous in the history of walking. Outdoor life was enjoying a popular boom; for this condition the motor car and the country club were in large measure responsible. The open-air enthusiast found a ready hearing, his preachments falling upon fertile ground. In this year a little group of about ten walkers organized the Walkers’ Club of America, and almost simultaneously Charles G. Bullard, of the Appalachian Mountain Club, established a New York branch of that organization, the membership being drawn principally from the members of the Boston Club residing in or near this city. Prominent among the organizers of the Walkers’ Club was James H. Hocking, one of the most enthusiastic pedestrians in this country, and one who believes that walking will cure most of the ills to which mind and body are heir. This organization was opposed to hiding its light under a bushel; its conception of its functions was thoroughly democratic; its primary purpose was to induce the largest number of people possible to use their legs in the way that God intended that they should.

“Now, while walking could scarcely be said to be attaining widespread popularity, there was in the ensuing year or two a steady growth in interest. A walking organization was formed by some of the members of the Crescent Athletic Club in conjunction with the Union League Club, also of the ‘city of homes and churches,’ and a programme of Sunday walks was prepared. But it was in 1913 that the actual recrudescence in walking occurred, when the Evening Post and the Times gave considerable space to articles on walking. In the late winter of that year, too, there began to appear inconspicuous paragraphs on the sporting pages of the Monday morning papers to the effect that on the previous day members of the Walkers’ Club had hiked from City Hall to Coney Island, or perhaps from St. George to New Dorp or from Columbus Circle to Hastings.

“The schedule time of the Coney Island walk, for the novice squad, to be completed before noon, was about two hours and a half. And the average New Yorker, who regards a long sleep and a good breakfast on Sunday mornings as his inalienable rights, gazed gloomily at these items, and then turned to an account of a murder or a break in the stockmarket, anything in fact radiating a more cheerful influence. Even the enthusiastic golfer sighed to himself as he thanked God that he was not as some other man.

“It was in 1913, too, that the Ladies’ Walking Club, affiliated with the Walkers’ Club of America, was organized, but it has never had many members or attained any marked degree of popularity. Prior, however, to its formation, the AlumnÆ Committee on Athletics of Barnard College prepared a programme of intercollegiate outings for Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays, which included several pleasant hikes; and these attracted a much greater number of participants than did the events of the Ladies’ Walking Club.

“Under the impetus derived from the Walkers’ Club several of the evening high schools formed pedestrian organizations which turned out with the parent body. One of the morning newspapers offered century medals, which seems to have materially stimulated interest, and by the beginning of 1915 there were six or eight schools that sent out their squads of hikers every Sunday.

“It was early in 1915 that the Walkers’ Club, with a membership of over two hundred, was incorporated. Shortly thereafter a schism arose in its ranks, which resulted in the birth of the American Walkers’ Association. At a meeting of the Walkers’ Club, held in June, seven members withdrew. Within a week twelve men had formed the Walkers’ Association, which was almost immediately incorporated. Of the split it may be said that it was deplorable, and beyond that its history must occupy a blank page in the annals of American walking.

“The Walkers’ Association immediately began an aggressive campaign to secure members. It adopted a small emblem which the majority of the one hundred and twenty men on its rolls wear. It also adopted the walking associations of most of the evening high schools, as well as all promising material which it could discover. Finally it organized a women’s branch with a schedule of walks of its own. It points with pride to a membership of over 135, a record of 17,856 miles covered by members on its hikes, so that if a message had been relayed it might have crossed the continent five times; to one hike on which 107 men turned out, and to another—not the same hike—when fifty miles was covered in a day.

“The walks of the Walkers’ Club and the Walkers’ Association invariably start from New York, and up to the present time have invariably been along the high roads which the pedestrian must share, in unequal distribution, with the motorcar and other vehicles. A speed of four to six miles an hour is maintained and the walks vary from ten to fifty miles in length. The walkers are divided into squads, graded according to speed and the distance to be covered. The hikes of the Fresh Air Club, on the other hand, start from some point reached by train, twenty to forty miles from New York, and the trail leads through the woods and over the hills, through streams and bogs and over rocks and fallen trees, with an occasional stretch of road as an incident to the walk.

“Like the Walkers’ Club it has a schedule, and where the going is good a speed of four miles or better is maintained. The walks terminate at a railway station which must be reached before train time. The Appalachians, however, saunter, they rarely exceed ten miles on their local tramps, they proceed leisurely cross country, if they see a hill that appeals to them they climb it and enjoy the view, or they linger on the shores of some lake. The Club walks are all held on Saturday afternoons and holidays, Sunday walking being mildly disapproved.

“As a purely constructive factor in the development of pedestrianism in the eastern United States, the Walkers’ Club and Walkers’ Association probably lead. Other clubs have conceived theories—ideals, perhaps—these organizations have created pedestrians. Their walking season extends from the 21st of June to the 22nd of December, and from the 22nd of December to the 21st of June. Both clubs have trained people to walk. An officer of one of them once remarked to the writer that fifty per cent of the members did not know how to use their legs.

“The Walkers’ Club has to its credit an extended list of activities. It fathered the evening high schools’ walking movement; it inaugurated a campaign of publicity; it has through Pathfinder Hocking planned walks of from one day to one week for individuals and groups; it has done much to raise pedestrianism from its low estate to an equality with other sports and the end is not yet. ‘Hocking,’ said a member of a rival organization, ‘has done more for walking than any other man in America, but—’ and the rest of the sentence I have transferred to that unpublished page in the annals of walking on which the recording secretary spilled his ink.

“A few years ago the Walkers’ Association mapped out a most elaborate program. With the consummation of its plans, however, the war materially interfered. It was intended to create a large number of walking squads. There was to be a squad for the ‘tired business man’—that variety of the genus homo of whom we read much and whom we never see; a cross-country squad, which would take tramps similar to the hikes of the Fresh Air Club; an afternoon squad for the man who desired to spend his Sunday mornings in dreams; and any other kind of squad that anyone might desire to suggest.

“It planned the establishment of affiliated clubs in other cities, and ultimately an organization which would in some respects resemble the Wandervogel, the great national pedestrian body of Germany. At the present time it has a prosperous branch at Cleveland with a membership in excess of five hundred.

“In the meantime, before a consummation of their more ambitious plans can be hoped for, much less realized, it were well if a federation of all the walking clubs in New York was perfected, with a common headquarters, where maps and data of much value might be made available to all hikers, and where frequent gatherings might be held for the interchange of ideas and experiences. And to the attainment of this object the Walkers’ Association may well address itself.”