Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
In July 1921, Benton MacKaye, founder of regional planning and the visionary behind the Appalachian Trail, held a historic meeting with fellow preservationists in the remote New Jersey lodge that was to become Hudson Farm.
Dedicated to the protection of the nation’s last wild places, they were channeling the inchoate spirit of the coming age with a grand vision for the public domain that would advance the public interest and the democratic ideal on vast landscapes.
The first step toward this end, they said, was to liberate land from industrial capitalism. The Appalachian Trail (AT), proclaimed MacKaye, would be “in essence a retreat from profit.”