Just off the Appalachian Trail, south of Boiling Springs, Pa., a developer sought to build 634 houses below White Rocks Ridge, an outcropping of quartzite that forms the northern end of the Blue Ridge Mountains. To reach the new houses, the developer would build a road across the White Rocks Trail near its intersection with the AT.

Hiking past hundreds of houses was not what forester Benton MacKaye had in mind when he proposed a trail from Georgia to Maine in 1922. MacKaye's idea was to establish "a sanctuary from the scramble of everyday worldly commercial life"—not a route defined by residential landscapes.

But MacKaye's vision is facing new challenges. The housing proposal, which area residents and hiking enthusiasts vigorously opposed before its first phase was denied on technicalities last summer, is just one of many threats facing the AT. In addition to development pressures, declining air quality, threats to biodiversity, and climate change are jeopardizing the wilderness experience the historic trail is meant to provide.

These challenges are transforming the work of protecting the trail. From the first enthusiastic meeting of trail volunteers in Washington, D.C., in 1925 until recent years, the focus was simply on establishing and protecting the trail corridor, a tract of land no wider than 1,000 feet and, in many places, barely bigger than the treadway itself. AMC and other trail-maintaining clubs of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (originally the Appalachian Trail Conference) worked to ensure that the route was accessible and the trail was kept in good condition.

Yet today all but about eight of the trail's 2,175 miles from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Katahdin in Maine are on officially protected National Park land. And while trail maintenance work remains vital, the focus of advocacy efforts has shifted outward, beyond the corridor, to the scenic views surrounding it and to the region's air, water, plants, and animals. As the trail's popularity draws 3 million to 4 million hikers each year, the ATC's regional partnership committees in the South, Mid-Atlantic, and New England regions must address new concerns.

"In the old days we might have confined our comments to the footpath and a mile or two beyond the footpath," says Cosmo Catalano, a member of AMC's Berkshire Chapter and chairman of the ATC's New England Regional Partnership Committee. "Now we see there is a wider world out there, and so we feel we need to be able to comment."

Catalano, a theater production manager for Williams College who started doing trail work with AMC a decade ago, says that the partnership committees now advise the ATC on issues such as how to start a volunteer program with the National Park Service to inventory plants on the trail; how a warming climate affects hemlock health; and the possibility of larger utility lines across the trail.

"The broader view is becoming more and more prevalent," he says. "There are still—and there will always be—a group of volunteers who are on the ground and dealing with the footpath. There are others saying, 'I need to be thinking about global warming and power plant impacts from the Midwest.'"

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