 Thank you all for joining us this afternoon. Career paths can sometimes be circuitous, and I think mine certainly qualifies for that. But I think this is probably a good moment to mention that for many, many years now I have felt as though I finally have found a home here at UVM, and I'm very grateful for that. And so I'll take this opportunity to thank the university and also to thank my colleagues in the history department for helping me to feel right at home in Wheeler House. Now with that said, an important centennial is approaching. That of Betten MacKay's proposal for the Appalachian Trail published in the Journal of the American Institute of Architects in October 1921. MacKay's plan, far more complex than the footpath that today links Katahdin in Maine with Springer Mountain in Georgia, represented a farsighted effort to utilize the undeveloped Appalachian region as a strategic battle line against encroaching civilization and capitalism. There, America's suffering urban populations could find solace in a progression of self-sustaining non-industrial communities that offered opportunities to balance employment with, in his words, productive recreation, and thus, as he explained it, solve the problem of living. In his own words are possibly those of his close friend, Clarence Architect Clarence Stein. The project was one in housing and community architecture and joined articles by English garden city planner Thomas Adams and architect Henry Wright addressing other aspects of community planning in that same issue. Neither MacKay nor Stein believed that initial article to be anything more than a rough sketch of their sweeping ideas. And by early 1922, MacKay already had begun looking for ways to explain his proposal crosswise rather than lengthwise, again, his words. And during the spring and summer of 1923 in the Columbia Valley of northwestern New Jersey in the northeasterly part of the state, MacKay developed a cross-sectional prototype for the AT Regional Plan aided by financial assistance from Stein. And he used the Hudson Guild Farm as both a base of operations and as a model for the type of farm camps that he envisioned along the AT corridor. And assisted by young men from New York City's Hudson Guild, he also mapped and opened a 10-mile footpath along a ridge of the Wallkill Mountains calling it the Hudson Guild Link and leaving a northward from the farm to a small railroad station at Spartus Station where he hoped to beckon New York City hikers to an expedition by rail and foot. Both MacKay and Stein intended that Hudson Guild Link to be a spur to the AT trail and thus the Hudson Guild Link and the Hudson Guild Farm become crucial parts to his Columbia Valley study. Today only in the Columbia Valley of New Jersey is it possible to really glimpse, at least on the land, the full Stein-MacKay conception for the AT. Now the story really has three trailheads. I think it's important initially to provide background context leading up to the meeting of MacKay and Stein at the Hudson Guild Farm in 1921 and especially to explain the influence of England's Garden City planning movement to both men and also to the AT project itself. And then with Benton's navigational maps in hand, we can venture into the Columbia Valley and explore the land features that he identified and the valley itself becomes a multifaceted province for the AT Regional Plan. And then we can, from a vantage point, overlooking that valley, possibly from an overlook that Benton christened Clarence's rock, we can reexamine the AT Regional Plan and whether or not it really deserves the description utopian, which is often how it's portrayed. And although the AT itself, the trail, veers toward a different destination, the story of that trail and its building becomes an allegory for the MacKay-Stein friendship that began that year at Hudson Guild Farm and flourished for more than half a century until 1975, the year both men died, MacKay at 96 and Stein at 92. The two men of such vastly different backgrounds, education and travel and experience should prosper in friendship from as improbable a beginning point as the Appalachian Trail and that the trail itself should spring from that union are really intriguing parts of the story. Let me introduce Benton MacKay, who was born in Stanford, Connecticut in 1879 and developed a lifelong devotion to hiking. Ramley might be a better word when his family moved from New York City to the small village of Shirley Center, Massachusetts in 1888. There, MacKay discovered, there too, MacKay discovered the quiet archetypical New England village that would later play such an important role in his thinking, his thinking and Clarence Stein's thinking about communities. MacKay entered Harvard in 1896, studied geology and geography and followed by forestry at Harvard's graduate program in forestry. In turn, that led to assignments for Gifford Pinchot's fledgling forest service in 1905. MacKay's assignments for Pinchot led him to the upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest where he struggled to revitalize communities devastated by the timber industry's migratory clear-cutting. And it's during this period that MacKay becomes familiar with England's garden city planning movement and Benton developed a number of experimental forest communities loosely tied to Howard's concepts, replacing Howard's open belts of agricultural land with publicly controlled forests. The concern about exploitation of natural resources and their human consequences led MacKay to the Labor Department where in 1919 he published his first book, Employment in Natural Resources which offered new communities, new agricultural communities to America and borrowed a plan for Canadian townships by Thomas Adams, the former manager of England's first experimental garden city, Letchworth, which is shown here on the screen. It's really four different alternative plans and MacKay enlarged that model by designating leftover triangular plots as community forests. That same year, 1919, at age 40, MacKay resigned from public service and experimented briefly with journalism for a leftist daily in Milwaukee, the Milwaukee leader and then returned to New York City and following the death of his wife in April 1921, he retreated to Mount Olive, New Jersey and the farm of his friend Charles Harris Whitaker who was the editor of the Journal of the American Institute of Architects and there MacKay continued to explore progressive ideas for reform, one of which was a plan to construct new communities throughout the Appalachian region and connect them with a continuous foot trail appealed to Whitaker and the introduction to Stein at the nearby Hudson Guild Farm followed in July. That meeting at Hudson Guild Farm with Stein marked the close of a very ill-defined period in MacKay's life but also the beginning of a new career of enormous productivity and 40 years later MacKay would write a letter to Stein acknowledging that that meeting marked the start of his main life underscored. Stein's career contrasts sharply with that of MacKay and born in 1882 in Rochester, New York to a Jewish family of German descent, Stein grew up in the comfortable surroundings of New York City's Upper West Side his family urbane and financially secure. His mother became a member of the Society for Ethical Culture which operated a free academy, the Working Man's School for the City's Underprivileged Children and both Clarence and his sister Gertrude enrolled as tuition-paying pupils. The school's curriculum emphasized social obligation and as a youth Stein viewed the crowded squalor of New York City's Lower East Side. Stein studied architecture at Columbia University and the Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Paris before returning to New York in 1911 and work with the architectural firm of Cram, Goodhew and Ferguson. He remained closely involved with the Ethical Culture Society and his life's work as an architect of communities takes shape during this period. He also becomes, after helping New York Governor Al Smith orchestrate a program for housing reforms Stein becomes a political ally of Smith and considers becoming a candidate for Vice President during Smith's independent bid for the presidency in 1919. And as chairman of the AIA's Committee on Community Planning Stein was well acquainted with England's Garden City movement and its two experimental cities, Letchworth and Wellen. Thus at the time of their meeting in New Jersey the career paths of these two individuals had followed nearly opposite directions. Steins steadily ascending, McKay always struggling to maintain constancy and yet as their friendship developed each would influence the other's work. Benton's provincial view became more sophisticated and Stein's urban focus expanded to regional dimension. From the outset of their collaboration for the AT, McKay and Stein saw the need to galvanize local trail clubs and also to organize a single body to oversee the mapping and building of the AT, a goal they achieved in 1925 when the Appalachian Trail Conference formed. However, the practical minded members of that body focused principally on the through trail, the long trail, the through trail. And although McKay and Stein grudgingly acknowledged those circumstances the first steps to a long journey Benton confided that the trail would never function as intended until the camp as well as the path was an inherent part of the system. All the while, McKay and Stein had voiced the need for an organization with broader goals and McKay's words to untangle the world's industrial cobweb. And in 1923, his words, in 1923 a small band of idealists including McKay, Stein, Lewis Mumford, Charles Harris Whitaker, economist Stuart Chase, and philanthropist Alexander Bing organized the Regional Planning Association of America initially intending to call themselves the Garden City and Regional Planning Association but instead settling on an informal alliance with their English counterparts. McKay, Mumford, and Stein formed the group's nucleus and members sought to confront a broad array of urban problems largely ignored by the country's nascent planning profession. And this is interesting. Mumford regarded the AT proposal as the group's centerpiece. And for a brief period, 1923 to 1925 the RPAA took custody of the AT project. With funding from membership dues and with stipends from Stein McKay began his Columbia Valley study just less than a week after the RPAA's organizational meeting. A project to impel and guide a public will to do as McKay explained it. Clarence and Benton spent the weekend of April 21 at Hudson Guild Farm talking over plans, organizing maps, and taking short walks. Clarence returned to New York City on Sunday evening and on Monday morning Benton began his study and his diary from that day recites started the new exploration by scouting the trail and baseline over the western range to the schoolhouse. The words new exploration become important as we'll see. Work on both the Hudson Guild link and the larger cross-sectional study for the AT regional plan coincided during the spring and summer months of 1923. And during daylight hours McKay located triangulation points, scouted old logging roads, and sketched land contours. During the evening hours he transposed field notes and drawings onto maps. Stein provided tactical support obtaining a planometer for measuring overland distances and supplying drafting equipment and paper. By the end of May McKay had chartered a through path from Hudson Guild Farm north to Sparta Station following a western ridge of the Walco Mountains and trail clearing with boys from New York City's Hudson Guild began early in July and reached Sparta Station by July 21st. McKay reported the story to the New York Evening Post which published his map of the Hudson Guild link and his extension northerly to McAfee Junction where it was to connect with the proposed route of the AT. Thus the ten-mile Hudson Guild link between Bear Pond Landing and Sparta Station shown completed on this map holds considerable historic significance. Principally it can be counted among the first trails to be mapped and opened specifically for the long-distance footpath that became the AT. It's certainly the first path by McKay and one of only a very few paths that he opened and physically opened during his long life. More importantly, it represents the only trail segment to be created as part of the larger Appalachian Trail Regional Plan. In addition, it is the only trail segment to illustrate the McKay-Stein plan to combine rarrows and footpaths, a crucial means to draw urbanites into the Appalachian hinterlands and a strategy that he mapped at numerous locations along the proposed route of the AT. If you look at the small map up in the left-hand corner you'll see that the AT corridor now is a series of links. Each end of the link is joined to a railroad corridor and in a letter in July to Stein, McKay proclaimed we now have the first link railroad to railroad all cut through. New York City hikers could board a ferry at 23rd Street across the river to Hoboken Board train from the Delaware Lackawanna and Western Railroad stop at Lake of Haccon Landing board a boat and travel to bear pond landing, hike the Hudson Guild Link, staying overnight at either the Hudson Guild Farm or campsites that McKay had designated and then after reaching Sparta Station turn to the ferry slips at Jersey City via the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railroad. Thus the faint imprints of a trail near bear pond landing possibly part of the original Hudson Guild Link and shown here just to the right of the three trees in the lower right-hand corner and rising ascending a slight rise in the hill and also the small railroad station at Sparta Station and its attendant water tower, both of which survive and in fact now the owner of the railroad station has restored it. Both of those land resources are eminently suitable markers for this early period of AT history. All the while during those spring and summer explorations, McKay began shaping a plan for Columbia Valley. Applying his training as a forester he conducted ground surveys for both wooded and arable lands attaculating the potential for sustained utilization by limited populations once again borrowing a principal tenet from Howard's Garden Cities and although his 1921 AT article excludes industrial communities McKay's Columbia Valley Plan identifies sources for both water power and industry. For the late spring of 1923 McKay had provided a preliminary report to RPAA members calling it a reconnaissance for a regional plan in Columbia Valley but he continued to expand his ideas and continued to write during the fall and winter of that year and by the spring of 1924 he had compiled a fair-sized treatise titled A Suggested Policy for Approaching the Problem of Regional Planning in the United States lengthy in body as well as title and the document really extends well beyond Columbia Valley and becomes a manual for social and economic reform mostly with navigational maps that are part philosophical discourse part geography lesson and part socio-economic dead reckoning. And although most of his many maps and charts and tables are confined or limited to the easterly half of the country he described the document as nothing less than in his words a charting of the resettlement of America. Members of the RPAA may have been surprised at the document's scope and also probably surprised to learn how their membership dues were being spent and Mumford probably acting as a benevolent interpreter described the work as preliminary steps to much more comprehensive technical surveys by experts because Mackay conceded his work to be crude beginnings but then reasoned and these are his words like all methods in the making it must be rough hewn before it can be accurate and I think at least part of the explanation is that Mackay really believed at this stage in his life that the RPAA would almost certainly chart a path to reform and he likely sensed too and I think as it turned out accurately that his newly formed association with Stein and Mumford would mark a turning point in his own efforts too as he described it guide the rudder of evolution. Today the principal value of the treatise rests in those sections grounded in the Columbia Valley albeit buried about halfway into the document. There he enlarges the 1921 article proposing the AT Regional Plan and the two writings really need to be considered sequentially. Now in full philosophical stride trust me distilled here he identifies the regional mechanics of sorry the regional mechanics required to nourish a civilization designed for living as opposed to merely existing and mechanics that allow people to dwell in a special realm where it becomes possible to absorb first hand the energy of nature and the skyline trail that he outlined in the 1921 article becomes a symbolic backbone for these domiciles and the skeleton of that new domain is formed by a series of vertebrae the all important ridgeways and whenever possible ridgeways occupy the entire ridge from skyline to valley floor on both sides and are publicly controlled. In addition those ridgeways provide vantage points from which Makai's better plan for living becomes visible in the popular mind. At this point in the trek too readers of the treatise who are still lost in Makai's tangle of imagination reach an overlook and discover that his idealized places now have locations and names and from that vantage point the regional plan starts to come into focus below the wall kill ridgeway the valley opens as one of the border basins of the Musconet Kong river and its basin in turn is drained by Lubbers Run. Having drawn the valley in profile plan and cross section shown here he calls for storage reservoirs regulation of streams and control of forest cultivation and he also focuses on both present and potential land utilization and with students accounting he classifies and measures open lands and wooded areas to assure grazing for dairy herds, farm crops and sustainable forestry and he also carefully identifies lands to remain permanently forested adding an important element to his plan and with similar formulae precision and I do mean mathematical formulas he calculates the flow of streams to estimate hydroelectric power for industry he also uses the Hudson Guild farm to demonstrate the viability of farm camps as centers for regional food supplies and he prepared an enormous map of the farm and its plots one by one to estimate the agricultural productivity for the entire valley. The map is reproduced here but it's a poor image the map is enormous and belongs on an entire wall it's really an outstanding bit of field research. And within view of these meticulously documented land units, Mackay's newly cut footpath courses along a ridge of the Walkill Mountain a vertebrae that connects the valley to the spine of the AT and by the time he has finished the valley has become a discreet, self-sufficient regional unit where resources can be surveyed, classified and watchfully managed and the panorama of the AT regional plan finally becomes visible the treatise thus becomes important in several ways. Ironically although the documents many tables, charts calculations, formulas may have confounded members of the RPAA, Benton's many facts and figures also add substance and structure to the AT article from 1921. And as does the Hudson Guild link the document also becomes an important part of AT history, the only writing only writing to illuminate the AT regional plan as conceived by Mackay and Stein and the single most important contribution of the RPAA to AT history equally important the treatise foretells Mackay's emerging emphasis on open space to protect and confine community centers a theme that would later serve as a touchstone in much of his writing and in doing so Mackay offers a unique model to American urban planning placing forests under public control to contain and shape the growth of population centers and many years later as president and a founding member of the Wilderness Society he enlarges that model by including Wilderness objectives to both his urban and regional plans and he really moves to the fore in American conservation history by doing that it's the facility with which he moves back and forth between city and nature that distinguishes him from many other conservationists during that time. Stein no less determined than Mackay to advance meaningful social change fulfilled several roles nurturing Mackay's thinking tracking his progress and financially securing new footholds. He also provided very tangible contributions to the Hudson Guild Farm by designing a number of buildings including Rosewater Cottage shown here for campers and guests. Stein's architectural expressions celebrate materials and exposed structure reflecting the influence of America's urban and crafts movement and Mackay found the cottage to be a very comfortable working environment and there too Mackay, Stein, Mumford and other members of the RPAA entertained England's garden city planners including Sir Raymond Unwin and Scottish planner Sir Patrick Gettys. It was Gettys who introduced Mackay to the term Geotechnics the science of making the earth more habitable and Benton pursued that objective for most of his remaining years Let's pause catch our breath as we absorb Mackay's philosophical rambles and as we gaze out over the green mountains from the vantage point of Peru Peak on the AT and also the Long Trail in southern Vermont take time to reconsider the AT regional plan and whether or not it really deserves the description utopian I think again any reconsideration of that plan requires putting their efforts, that plan into historical context and the question for us today isn't so much whether the goals of these progressive thinkers defied possibility or even whether Mackay, Mumford and Stein and others believed in those possibilities for clearly they did instead the question for us is whether we're sufficiently grounded in an awareness that commends the methods they chose to shape public outlook or put another way those methods thoughtfully even artfully crafted given the cultural makeup of that period and for example in 1921 it didn't take a great deal of imagination to envision the potential for the undeveloped Appalachian region a vast undeveloped area penetrating the country's populace eastern seaboard not too far away New York state had already established an enormous forest preserve in the Adirondack Mountains between 1872 and 1892 interestingly enough initially to protect the watersheds that served the state's canal systems in 1870 for example the revenues from the state's canal system paid for all costs of state government and the emphasis on watershed protection is just the kind of stream flow that Mackay underscored in his 1924 treatise in addition a number of mountainous areas Benton's Ridgeways had already begun to emerge in different parts of the country including forest and also national parks Benton had played a critical role or key role in the origins of the white mountain national forest by conducting a ground survey of watersheds in the white mountains tracking the influence of those watersheds on navigable waters in turn providing the legal justification for the federal government to acquire those forest lands Moreover the prospects for still developing electrical power industry an industry that Mackay described as capable of dictating the regional framework of all industry must have been enticing late 1890s and early 1900s people really believed that electricity would transform society in a dramatic way and the electrical power industry was still developing and also and this is really important as well the soon to be limitless reach of the automobile and the enormous landscaping that would follow had not yet really become visible in the public mind I think initially we can dismiss any contention that these figures engaged in self-deception were lost in the clouds or as one writer has proclaimed were only tangentially connected to the real world that's basically nonsense to Mackay himself once described his own endeavors as exploring the utopia of reconstruction but his emphasis on new aspirations suggests an awareness of the challenges in normity and the need for experimentation and he states as much in his 1924 treatise when he acknowledges that the task is one for the generations again his words with equal candor Mumford credited Stein and Wright with being able to design new towns the physical place of community but had nothing new to put in them no new way of living and for that they needed Mackay's vision and for his part Stein honestly acknowledged being a great believer in accomplishing the impossible and he spent most of his career testing that grey shifting borderland between idealized communities and communities grounded in real possibilities for the future ultimately the intensity with which he confronted that challenge weakened his mental health and in the context of utopian reconstruction the two most important contributions by Mackay and Stein respectively the Appalachian Trail and Radburn New Jersey represent dreams at least partially fulfilled confirming the value of their determination to seek solutions for human problems and the spark of interest that defines their kindred spirit and perhaps too we shouldn't judge either man too harshly if each occasionally found a sense of security as a measure of insulation against the inevitable disappointments nor would it be fair to touch on a related topic here just briefly to really describe nobody be fair to characterize Mackay and Stein as anti-urban Mackay believed that a society without its city would be a headless one and a society without a forest a rootless one and much of his writing offers very creative ways for joining the two and Stein I think deserves a lot of credit for Mackay's approach to the city and there's a marvelous section in the 1924 treatise where he looks at the whole question Mackay looks at the question of decentralization very objectively ways ways it back and forth not really favoring one over the other and this is almost 50 years before Jane Jacobs weighs in on the topic ultimately Mackay is a nature writer who I think accepts the city Stein and Mumford too have been criticized for their focus on new towns and their efforts centered on the need for sufficient open space to demonstrate alternatives to the monotonous grids of streets and blocks that oozed out across the countryside those are Stein's words and I think in response to some of those criticisms Stein would likely point to his urban projects Sunnyside in Queens or the hillside homes in the Bronx shown here where city officials stubbornly refused to alter the planned but completely grid of blocks and streets to provide for the efficient design of open space and also circulation patterns that didn't require children to cross busy streets it was enormously frustrating for Stein and although the question of decentralization is complex some of these aspects don't seem to find their way into that discussion I think ultimately too we can reconsider the AT regional plan in far more pragmatic terms ideas firmly grounded in possibility simply by examining the land use tools that both Mackay and Stein employed to give structure to the plan Benton's mechanics for a civilization designed for living Distilled to its essence the plan relies on public control of land to protect open space and to thwart the ill effects of land speculation and the dividends of public investment to communities as a whole is that goal so very different from our efforts today to craft public private sector partnerships that place open lands in trust for future generations Mackay's shining contribution is that he sought to connect those open spaces and communities with footpaths much as numerous nonprofits and public agencies are attempting to do today a random rather than comprehensive manner and one of Mackay's survey of the Columbia Valley to isolate the components essential to sustainable communities is that vision dramatically different from our efforts here in Vermont to focus on village growth centers or efforts elsewhere to approach what we call smart growth remarkably Mackay's 1928 book the new exploration of philosophy of regional planning which again borrows those two words from his diary on April 23 at Hudson Guild Farm expands his 1924 treatise by emphasizing the control of land along principal travel corridors and both he and Mumpert explored ways to zone the state highways metaphorical levees to stem the flood of metropolitanism and eradicate wayside fungus a term that Mackay borrowed from naturalist Walter Pritchard Eaton today we call it sprawl and strip development although I think wayside fungus has its own sort of clarity and to those of us who are engaged in these tasks to we who are engaged in these tasks consider ourselves utopians idealists perhaps optimists might be a better word and if we consider Mackay and Stein simply to be optimists then the lasting value of the AT regional plan may rest in its conception in Mackay's words as a comprehensive ordering of these ideas intended to create a popular will to do what could be more lucent what could be more firmly grounded today literally today than a call for a public will to do and when measured against against that standard perhaps the AT regional plan succeeded at least in part and if so the history of the AT and its influence I should say the history of the AT the footpath and its influence may be far more expansive than we realize the waning years of the Mackay-Stein friendship were quiet ones in 1974 on Benton's 75th birthday Clarence sketched one of his many portraits of Benton this one from a global vantage point soon after Stein, Mumford and Mackay resurrected the RPAA this time as the regional development council of America and once again membership dues were funneled to Benton this time for his work on his life's unpublished opus the geotechnics of years before Stein had penned a letter to Benton urging him to pursue that quest emphasizing that housing and city building are part of something much larger that the new land must be unveiled by someone who is free to separate realities from fiction possibly doubting his own abilities at that difficult moment in his life Clarence passed the torch of humanism to Mackay this is Stein writing, Ben it's up to you climb to the high ridges and make clear to us the real possibilities of the future we know you have your feet on the solid ground even if your head seems now and then up in the clouds almost a decade later 1964 on Clarence's 82nd birthday he sent another note to Benton reaffirming the central role that communities and open spaces have played, had played in their respective career paths this is Stein writing again my thoughts go back to the new towns but more and more I find my interest is in the regional problem the relation of the new and old communities to each other and to the preservation of open space and the relation of man the background of nature that's your influence Ben you and your wilderness for which I am everlastingly grateful the same year a talented National Geographic Society photographer Kip Ross captured a sense of their kind of spirit in this portrait taken in the gardens of the gardens of the Cosmos Club in Washington DC where Mackay worked quietly on his geotechnics opus and where he and Clarence had formed their own small octogenarian club for Mackay's part he was always very careful to credit people in the origins of both the AT and the Appalachian Trail Conference in 1969 the ATC paid tribute to Mackay on his 90th birthday and Benton composed a poignant reply accepting the tribute in Clarence's name as well as his own but also hinting at the larger purpose they both had shared for the AT this is Benton writing on a midsummer Sunday in 1921 in the Highlands of New Jersey at Hudson Guild Farm I first met a man with whom then in there I had a long talk that's Mackay prose at full speed our friendship has endured through the years and I recently wrote to him that we have lived long enough to see together the product of our talk in a great American institution and this is interesting quite aside from our meeting the footpath from Maine to Georgia would undoubtedly have occurred it was due in the course of events but not the institution which now honors my 90th birthday had it not been for this man Clarence Stein our particular Appalachian Trail our particular Appalachian Trail would not have been born so there you have it the forgotten cross sectional regional plan for Columbia Valley and for the larger AT and a few snippets of the Mackay Stein story so thank you