Virginia's Lost Appalachian Trail

209 West Laurel Avenue,Damascus VA 24236

19 May, 2023

Description

The version of the Appalachian Trail (A.T.) from Damascus to Roanoke followed an entirely different route from the one it takes today. A.T. historian Mills Kelly tells the story of this 300-mile long lost section of the Appalachian Trail and will show us photos he gathered from archives and personal collections, many of which have never been seen by the hiking community. Join us to hear about this least known part of the history of the Appalachian Trail. Mills Kelly is a professor of history at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he is also the Director of the award-winning Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. A lifelong hiker on the Appalachian Trail, Mills is the host of The Green Tunnel Podcast, a podcast on the history of the Appalachian Trail and the author of Virginia’s Lost Appalachian Trail (The History Press, 2023). He has won numerous state, national, and international awards for his teaching and his research on teaching and learning, most recently the Gutenberg Teaching Award from the University of Mainz (Germany). Mills has been a volunteer on the Appalachian Trail for many years and currently is the maintainer of the Manassas Gap shelter in Linden, Virginia, one of the most historic shelters on the entire trail.