Appalachian Trail, Library of Congress

The Appalachian Trail runs 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine. Proposed by environmentalist Benton MacKaye in the October 1921 Journal of the American Institute of Architects, the greenway was envisioned as “a sanctuary and a refuge” where one could experience cooperation, community, and volunteer service for a shared cause. By 1968, the United States established the National Trails System. By 2000, over 50,000 miles (80,470 kilometers) of hiking, biking and riding trails ribboned green the United States’ landscape. A recent addition? The High Line, one of the top ten marriage proposal settings in New York City. Do you have a favorite spot in Nature?

Building the World Blog by Kathleen Lusk Brooke and Zoe G Quinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.