The first edition of the AMC White Mountain Guide, titled the Guide to Paths and Camps in the White Mountains, covered the camps and paths in only the northern and eastern portions of the White Mountains. Each copy was individually handmade, ran 206 pages, included a single map, and cost $1.00. In comparison, the newly published twenty-eighth edition runs nearly 600 pages, includes six color maps, is distributed nationally, and generates sales in the tens of thousands for each edition.
While many regard the AMC White Mountain Guide as essential to hiking the trails of the White Mountains as water and a compass, past editions reveal that the guide is much more than a changing catalog of trails. The successive editions chronicle the evolution of both the AMC and the WMNF, including AMC’s growing focus on outdoor education and the first WMNF land acquisitions following the passage of the federal Weeks Act of 1911. Guide introductions to new editions point to natural disasters such as the Hurricane of 1938 and the devastating 1954 hurricane season, as well as outdoor recreation trends in skiing and backpacking, construction of new highways, Wilderness and scenic area designations, and the postponement of trail updates due to gasoline and manpower shortages during World War II.
The series of guide introductions throughout the years and notable content changes provide an archive of AMC’s history and evolution of its conservation, recreation, and education mission. Early editions focused almost entirely on the ambitious undertaking of providing, as the first edition noted, “a comprehensive guide book of the White Mountains…covering that section of the mountains in which the need seems to be greatest, it being the only large territory not covered by local guide books.” By the fifth edition, the guide was nearly 300 pages thicker and included a new educational chapter taken from the AMC pamphlet, “Emergencies in the Woods.”
In later editions, the guide also included information on new Wilderness areas designated under the Wilderness Act of 1964 and protection of the Appalachian Trail Corridor through the National Trail System Act of 1968. The twentieth edition, published in 1972, introduced “Carry In/Carry Out” principles and Wilderness guidelines to educate hikers about trail stewardship and limit the negative ecological impacts of increased backcountry use during the 1970s backpacking boom. Today’s AMC White Mountain Guide includes discussions about backcountry etiquette, hypothermia avoidance, weather, protecting the alpine zone, and basic hike preparation through the HikeSafe program.
Also chronicled in the guide is the impact of devastating forest fires, including a 35,000-acre blaze in 1907, and natural disasters such as the Hurricane of 1938 that obliterated trails and resulted in the closure of virtually the entire WMNF the following year due to fire danger. The ninth edition, published in 1934, pointed to the influence of human activity in the WMNF. The introduction attributed “extensive additions and alterations” to the “explosive increase in the popularity of skiing and the intense activity of the Government in the construction of new trails and highways.”
