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  1. #1
    Registered User somers515's Avatar
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    Default Anyone know why the AT was rerouted away from Gorham, NH?

    Anyone know why the AT was rerouted away from Gorham? When heading north on the AT and you reach nearly the top of Gorham the AT now goes right down the Rattle River drainage to Rt 2 (several miles from town). But there is a nice trail that leads directly into Gorham. I didn’t know when I hiked that trail previously but apparently that was the old AT. Tomorrow I’ve arranged a shuttle back to the trail from Gorham and I was looking at FarOut/Guthooks and looks like I’ll be starting with a climb up Mt. Hayes and I see a trail from Mt. Hayes directly into Gorham that the app says used to be the AT. Just curious for the reason for the reroute and about when it happened if anyone knows. Thanks in advance!
    AT Flip Flop (HF to ME, HF to GA) Thru Hike 2023; LT End-to-Ender 2017; NH 48/48 2015-2021; 21 of 159usForests.com

  2. #2

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    The AT gets moved ALL the time. Earl Shaffer complained on his last trip how little of the trail was the same from his '47 hike. When I was a maintainer, we joked it was to sell more maps. What ever the reason, hike on.

  3. #3

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    During the late 1960s and the early seventies, the volume of backpackers and thruhikers increased substantially. To the local population and the middle-class vacationers that the locals catered to, the backpackers were hippies and undesirable, so the official ATC approach was to reroute the trail out of towns to avoid conflicts. At some point the AT was rerouted to the Rattle River trail in Shelburne onto USFS lands. At the time the Brown Company, the large pulp and paper mill in Berlin and Gorham owned a very large block of land along the Androscoggin River from the Canadian border to the Maine line including the land in the Mahoosuc range and the land on the lower half of the Carter Moriah trail which was the former AT route into Gorham so relocating the trail onto US land when possible off of private land made sense and was an ATC goal. AMC at one point also owned a large block of land on the north side of the river starting at the north shore of the river near the hydro dam to Hogan Road along the west side of the road. The relocated trail initially turned right at the Hogan Road rather than turning left where the current AT runs. It followed North Road east to the Peabody Brook trail, then turned off the Hogan Road onto the Peabody Brook trail. The Peabody Brook trail went by Giant Falls and then onto Dream Lake where it rejoined the Mahoosuc trail. Peabody Brook trail was also on private land owned by locals with homes on either side of the trail and no parking. AMC wanted a way of celebrating their Centennial in 1976 and built the new Centennial trail in 1976 from Hogan Road to the Mahoosuc Trail which is the current AT route. The Centennial Trail also runs through a section of state of NH owned land called "Leadmine State Forest" onto the Brown Company lands that the entire Mahoosuc Trail ran over.

    Early in the AT history, the AT crossed the Androscoggin in a couple of places, initially it was routed into Gorham over the swinging bridge over the Peabody River (still there), onto Main street and into town to School Street. The hikers were told to go to the end of the street and request the owner to row them across the river to the Hogan Road. The trail then ran upslope to join the Mahoosuc trail above the Mascot Lead mine complex near Leadmine ledge. At some point it also crossed the Mascot Bridge (no longer there) over the river at the hydro station located behind the town of Gorham Public Works and then onto Hogan Road where it went upslope to the point above Leadmine Ledge on the Mahoosuc trail. Eventually it was relocated and crossed a wooden plank catwalk under the railroad trestle in Gorham, after the trestle it crossed the large island and then crossed the hydro canal over the hydro dam where hikers could look through the windows down into the hydro station turbines. At some point the hydro stations along the river were bought by Brookfield and for several years there was no legal route across the river and hydro canal until the ATV trail went in and the Mahoosuc trail was rerouted away from the hydro dam to an old railroad bridge upriver still using the catwalk (now steel) under the trestle.

    The attitude of the towns to the AT has changed substantially over the years to the point where Gorham sought and got recognition as an AT trail town despite not having any of the AT in town. The designation ceremony was during Covid and I do not think any of the signage was even put up.

    Brown Company went through a succession of owners and eventually the mill in Berlin was torn down. The AT remained on the Mahoosuc trail under a series of owners and various pieces of it were protected usually at minimal cost. A six mile stretch of the AT and the north slope of the Mahoosucs came under to ownership of a timber liquidator from Maine that stripped the slopes and the woods to the north and "greenmailed" the NPS to buy the AT corridor and conservation easement on their land under the threat of subdividing the land and selling frontage lots on the AT. They reportedly sold that land and easement for far more than they paid for the entire block of townships they had purchased and stripped of trees. There is a recent transaction where the Society for the Protection of NH Forests is buying a large block of timberland to the south of the AT in Shelburne, some of the high value conservation land will be protected from logging while the rest will be managed sustainably and prevented from further development. The Yale retirement fund has been actively buying the cut over lands on the north side of the Mahoosucs with other lands being protected to the south of the ridge by various organizatons.

  4. #4
    Some days, it's not worth chewing through the restraints.
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    Default

    The most common reason for moving the AT (or just about any trail) is to get it off private land.

  5. #5

  6. #6

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    Very thorough explanation, thanks.

  7. #7

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    My favorite odd reason to move the AT was that the AT east of Bigelow would have become an Aquablaze when the Dead River was dammed and turned into Flagstaff Lake in Maine. The lake flooded two towns and the original AT route. The old road paving is still visible heading under the lake. The AT was routed to an alternative trail called the Arnold Trail (route that the Arnold expedition used to cross from the Kennebec River to the upper Dead River watershed on their way to attack Quebec).

    If you read the history of the AT, there was big rush to fill in the gaps to get it into one complete trail. The trail almost ended at Mt Washington in NH if not for the persistence of Myron Avery. Helon Taylor did the field work to desperately string together mostly logging roads in western Maine to fill in big gaps. The 2nd edition Appalachian Trail Guide to Maine has several sections where the trail does not exist yet and the trail descriptions in those areas are just suggestions. It did not help that Maine law outlawed starting fires of any type including cooking fires on private land unless accompanied by a registered Maine guide. Maine had sold off the majority of public lands in the state prior to the AT being laid out so the solution was to run the AT between private sporting camps that tended to be on streams and ponds rather than the ridgelines. Earl Shafer complained during his anniversary hike that the MATC had turned the AT in Maine into an athletic event as the first time he went through he avoided many of the summits and stayed at sporting camps most nights the first time around. The trail was substantially relocated to the ridgelines in Maine on newly acquired public lands in the 1980s. MATC has been playing catch up ever since to replace the older fall line trails that went straight up slope with hardened trails with switchbacks.

    Comments have been made that the AT was mostly a handshake agreement with landowners until the AT was made the first national scenic trail under the control of the NPS. That opened up big funding sources to finish protecting the trail on private lands and allowed things like eminent domain. In some areas, predominantly down south, that led to conflicts with landowners and on occasionally squatters on existing federal lands when the NPS came through and formalized the route. Maintaining clubs are required to "walk the lines" along the AT official boundaries to report any encroachments on a routine basis.

    These days trail volunteers are warned on a yearly basis that any relocation of the trail no matter how small requires permission of the ATC and National Park Service. There is potentially months if not years of paperwork required to approve a relocation.

  8. #8
    Registered User somers515's Avatar
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    Default

    When I asked this question I was thinking I bet peakbagger knows the detailed answer. Thank you so much for the backstory! Wow! And thank you to all others who replied.
    AT Flip Flop (HF to ME, HF to GA) Thru Hike 2023; LT End-to-Ender 2017; NH 48/48 2015-2021; 21 of 159usForests.com

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