WAMU 88.5 : News

Filed Under:

Appalachian Trail Celebrates 75 Years

By: Bill Redlin // August 13, 2012
Play associated audio
comments
A sign along the Appalachian Trail.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtsofan/2069204851/
A sign along the Appalachian Trail.

Tuesday marks the 75th anniversary of the completion of the Appalachian Trail, but the path from Georgia to Maine is never really finished. In the decades since the more than 2,000-mile path was built, 99 percent has been relocated or rebuilt, and transferred to public ownership.

That means the trail and 250,000 contiguous acres are better protected from development.

Mark Wenger, executive director of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy in Harpers Ferry, W.V., says as desirable land becomes available, it will continue to shift. Wenger says the relocations and rebuilding have also made the path itself more sustainable. In the beginning, it went straight up and down many mountains, which made erosion worse, and make hiking much harder.

Arts & Culture

NPR

Decades Later And Across An Ocean, A Novel Gets Its Due

John Williams' Stoner sold just 2,000 copies when it was originally published in 1965. It's now acknowledged as a classic work, is a best-seller across Europe and the No. 1 novel in the Netherlands.

Food

NPR

Giant Renaissance Food People Descend Upon New York

Giuseppe Arcimboldo was a 16th-century artist who liked to play with his food, transforming it into the building blocks of many of his fantastical portraits. Artist Philip Haas has taken those portraits out of museums, reinterpreting them as colossal statues that interact with the natural environment.

Politics

NPR

Political Takeaways: Headaches For The White House

Controversies dominated this past week's political headlines, leaving the Obama White House on the defensive, trying to contain any lasting damage. Host Rachel Martin talks with NPR's Mara Liasson.

Technology

NPR

Young Kenyans Build Mobile Apps For Local Use

College students and recent graduates crammed the top floor of a tech hub in Nairobi for a competition built around the theme "Solutions for the Next Billion Mobile Users." Africa has more than 600 million mobile phone users (approximately 11 percent of the global total) – and the number is growing.

Leave a Comment

Help keep the conversation civil. Please refer to our Terms of Use and Code of Conduct before posting your comments.