Earnest Seekers: 1940-1979

AMC Outdoors, January/February 2001

1940-1959 Notable "Firsts"
Upon the country's entry into World War II, the AMC began printing lists of "members in the service" in Appalachia — with an eventual total of more than 400 — and pared down its activities. Members were asked to donate sleeping bags, snowshoes, and other gear for the boys. Gas and tire rationing kept adventures close to home, although trains still ran to the mountains; the first organized bicycling trips provided a new option for local treks.

A jubilant public set attendance records at Pinkham in 1946, but the numbers dwindled during the rest of the decade. Nevertheless, the AMC opened Evans Notch Hut (at the Brickett Place, now an environmental educational center) in 1948. The club also keenly watched the growing use of the Appalachian Trail (its first thru-hiker, Earl Shaffer, completed the trek in '48) and the attempts to summit Everest, which finally succeeded in 1953.

In the first half of the 1950s, the number of AMC trips increased 50 percent, with camping gaining in popularity and snowshoeing making a comeback. During that heady decade, the AMC also formalized its conservation work by creating a committee (whose earnest chair, Ruth Hardy, reported after Congress adjourned that "none of the bad bills...were passed"); saw the first televised AMC activity, a whitewater run on New Hampshire's Contoocook; and bid adieu to two legends: Joe Dodge, who retired after nearly 40 years, and "sign man" Paul Jenks, who painted 6,000 trail signs before bowing out. The end of the 1950s brought the first glimmer of a plan to build an interstate through Franconia Notch. The ensuing debate occupied the AMC for decades.

1960-1979 Backpacking Boom, Activism
When U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, an avid outdoorsman, wrote about the AMC's huts for National Geographic magazine in 1961, the backpacking boom that followed spurred the club to build another hut and renovate Pinkham Notch buildings. Mizpah Spring Hut opened in 1965, filling the gap between Zealand Falls and Lakes of the Clouds Huts.

Conservation Committee Chair Marjorie Hurd roused the AMC troops to action, urging support for several initiatives, including the Cape Cod National Seashore, created in 1961, and the Wilderness Act, passed in 1964. In the Whites, club members decried a plan for floodlights on the Old Man of the Mountain.

Following 1970's Earth Day and the "back-to-nature" movement, another wave of backpackers hit the Whites, leading AMC members to debate overcrowding in the backcountry and prompting a "carry in/carry out" campaign to reduce litter in the woods. Perhaps the biggest triumph of the 1970s was blocking a four-lane interstate highway through Franconia Notch — after more than 20 years of effort.

In 1975 Tom Deans succeeded Fran Belcher as executive director. Also that year, Ruby Horwood became the club's first female president.

And in 1978, after six years of debate, including accusations that the AMC was elitist, the club ended the requirement that new members be sponsored by two current members — opening the door to all.

But as the decade ended amid a national oil crisis and soaring inflation, the club entered its second century earnestly optimistic.

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