Overseers seek ban on advertising along Appalachian Trail

Hikers on the Appalachian Trail have new scenery to look at these days besides mountains and valleys: signs, notes, business cards and fliers advertising everything from gas stations that sell ice cream to sporting camps and hostels.

The trail, which was proposed by Benton MacKaye in 1921 as a refuge from everyday life, is being overrun by reminders of the commercial world, say members of the Appalachian Trail Conference, which oversees the 2,167-mile footpath that stretches from Maine to Georgia.

The conference, based in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., plans to vote next month on a policy that would ban all advertising on the trail.

“It was really just getting to be a problem,” said Brian B. King, director of public affairs for the conference.

“It’s been festering for a while, but basically, in the last two years especially, we started to get advertisements, sometimes fliers, left in shelters, sometimes signs in the trail corridor, for various establishments,” King said. “We even had a couple of instances of people cutting their own side trail to businesses.

About 53 miles of the trail run through Connecticut, where volunteers monitor it and remove any advertising they find.

“They’re instructed to do that,” said Ann H. Sherwood, chairwoman of the Connecticut chapter of the Appalachian Mountain Club trails committee, which oversees the trail in Connecticut and 7 miles of feeder trails.

“If we see somebody trying to advertise, we go to them and explain why the sign can’t be posted on the shelter or the trail,” Sherwood said.

The club instead encourages businesses such as grocery stores and restaurants to advertise in hiker magazines and trail pamphlets.

On a recent day in Salisbury, Conn., for example, a handwritten sign on a fence directed hikers to a gas station that carried ice cream and drinks.

But even some backers of the proposed advertising ban say the signs can be helpful in learning about restaurants, laundries and other businesses near the trail.

Dan “Wingfoot” Bruce, who runs the Center for Appalachian Trail Studies in Hot Springs, N.C., said many long-distance hikers want to know about such businesses and don’t mind the signs, although he thinks they detract from the sense of wilderness.

“A percentage of our users now get excited by pizza and beer nearby,” said Bruce, who has hiked the entire trail seven times.

There have been on-the-trail disputes over advertising. In Maine, for example, a local group that oversees the trail tore down a sign for a sporting camp that offered beds. The camp put it back up.

Technically, advertising is already banned on the trail because the land it passes through is a national park. King said it is clear from the regulations that businesses such as hot dog stands are prohibited on the trail.

But members of the Appalachian Trail Conference say what isn’t clear is whether fliers and other ads are banned.