In support of research on the history of the Appalachian Trail, this proposal seeks funding for travel to the Rauner Special Collections Library at Dartmouth College. An interdisciplinary book-length history of the trail—drawing on planning, history, and environmental studies—is the ultimate ambition of this project. Specifically, this research trip will focus on the authorship of the article that first proposed an Appalachian Trail, written by a man named Benton MacKaye and published in 1921. Two overall questions will organize the research: 1) What influenced MacKaye in developing the trail idea along the lines that he did? His article, "An Appalachian Trail: A Project in Regional Planning," described an exercise in community building that was much more ambitious than a mere venue for adventure. How did he arrive at this formulation, and how did he react to the subsequent watering down of his ideas? 2)How was the early trail work organized? In the years immediately following MacKaye's article, there was widespread enthusiasm for the project, but very haphazard organization of the monumental task of actually blazing and clearing the trail. How did these unfocused efforts eventually coalesce into the kind of multi-state effort necessary to build the trail?