A trail sign marks Six Husbands Trail in New Hampshire’s Great Gulf, circa 1910. PHOTO: AMC LIBRARY & ARCHIVES
A different style of sign identifies the Valley Way trailhead in Randolph, N.H., also circa 1910. PHOTO: AMC LIBRARY & ARCHIVES
A paint-covered stone marks the Twin Mountain Trail in 1919. PHOTO: AMC LIBRARY & ARCHIVES
AMC standardized its trail sign style after hanging this “A.M.C. Path” sign in the White Mountains, circa 1920. PHOTO: AMC LIBRARY & ARCHIVES
A crude arrow blazes the trail in Maine’s Mahoosuc Notch, in 1923. PHOTO: KARL P. HARRINGTON/COURTESY AMC LIBRARY & ARCHIVES
Two boys examine the signs atop South Twin Mountain in New Hampshire, in 1934. PHOTO: AMC LIBRARY & ARCHIVES
Snow nearly covered the white blazes on Under Mountain Trail, leading to AMC’s Northwest Camp in Connecticut, in 1956. PHOTO: AMC LIBRARY & ARCHIVES
AMC Mountain Leadership School participants build the Thunderstorm Junction cairn in 1963. PHOTO: AMC LIBRARY & ARCHIVES
An AMC group passes a cairn and painted blaze on Crawford Path in 1975. PHOTO: GEORGE BELLEROSE/COURTESY AMC LIBRARY & ARCHIVES
AMC volunteers blaze a section of the Bay Circuit Trail through Boxford, Mass., in 1991. PHOTO: CARL DEMROW/COURTESY AMC LIBRARY & ARCHIVES
A vintage Appalachian Trail blaze shows where the trail passed near AMC’s Gorman Chairback Lodge in Maine, before it was rerouted over a nearby ridge. PHOTO: MARC CHALUFOUR
AMC’s Library & Archives contains two bronze stencils, possibly used by AMC trail crews to paint trail signs and blazes. PHOTO: MARC CHALUFOUR
AMC’s trail-blazing legacy extends back to its founding, in 1876. One of the organization’s first White Mountain projects, constructing Lowe’s Path, involved installing signs on 400 trees. The crew hung a small board every 100 meters (yes, they originally used the metric system) and painted the same information on flat stones, from treeline to Mount Adams’s summit.
A variety of blazing and signage methods used by AMC and other trail builders led to a confusing lack of conformity, however. Early-20th-century images from the AMC Library & Archives show boulders coated in paint, wooden posts filled top to bottom with signs, and sprawling stone cairns. Photos also reveal tiny signs, short on information and barely visible from the trail.
Charles Blood, who served three years as AMC’s Councilor of Improvements starting in 1914, sought to change that. As AMC was transforming the disparate trails of the White Mountains into a connected network, Blood began cataloging trail markings and formalized a block-letter style for trail signs that was easy to replicate. As old signs and blazes wore out, AMC gradually replaced them with a more uniform system.
Today, blazing styles still differ from one area to another. But in the White Mountains, AMC trail adopters refresh painted blazes every six to 10 years and maintain cairns, rather than painted rocks, above treeline.