Prof. Mills Kelly publishes book on the history of the Appalachian Trail

Prof. Mills Kelly publishes book on the history of the Appalachian Trail

Mills Kelly, Professor of History at George Mason University and Director of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, has published a book on the history of the Virginia section of the Appalachian TraiI: Virginia’s Lost Appalachian Trail

Beginning in 1931, a beautiful tract of Virginia wilderness was home to a segment of the Appalachian Trail.  In 1952, however, the Appalachian Trail Conference moved the Virginia portion of trail roughly fifty miles to the west, at which point the previous 300-mile stretch of trail became largely forgotten. 

As is often the case with history projects, Mills came upon this one partly by accident.  A former boy scout and lifelong hiker, Kelly was in the archives of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy when came across an old letter about the AT running along the border of Franklin County, VA.  Because Kelly was born in Franklin County, the letter pricked his ears.  The reason:  Kelly happened to know that the Appalachian Trail does not go through Franklin County.  As Kelly puts it:  “A rabbit hole appeared. Should I jump in? Or walk away?”  He decided to jump in--and four years later, he has published a book that tells the story of this “lost” section of America’s most famous hiking trail.

Kelly initially conceived of this research project as a digital public history project, one that includes a website, a digital archive of primary sources relating to the old Virginia trail, and an episode of his Green Tunnel podcast, which is focused more broadly on the history of the entire Appalachian Trail.  He developed the digital project (funded in part by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities) in partnership with two high school teachers who live near the former section of trail.

When conceptualizing the project, Kelly decided to write it for a general, rather than academic audience.  He explains his motivation: “When I went off to college my intention was to become a print journalist, and so I took a lot of news writing courses and wrote for the college’s daily paper, producing dozens and dozens of stories over my four years there. When I got ready to start writing this book I went back to the lessons I’d learned in those news writing courses – some of them taught by pretty famous journalists (at the time famous) – and the experiences I’d had writing on deadline every week. It was a lot of fun to reconnect with that part of my writing self.”