Rip up this trail of racism!
/The Pacific Crest Trail, which runs from the Olympic Peninsula to Mexico, founded on racism. I've hiked a fair distance on the Pacific Crest, but of course would have never stepped foot on it had I known its origins. While we can't expect every decent American hiker to find other hiking venues, surely the Californians will want to. Perhaps Governor Moonbeam can block the route through his state.
"The 'negro boys”' of America, he complained in 1937, had remained 'closer to the soil' and so were taking 'all the athletic prizes,' while whites suffered from 'too much sitting on soft seats in motors, too much sitting in soft seats in movies, and too much lounging in easy chairs before radios.' Only a long trip in the woods by 'clean, strong young Christians,' Clarke’s assistant wrote, could 'preserve our Christian civilization,' while eradicating communism as well. The great attraction of the new trail, according to a young man who blazed a section, was 'the fact that I was one of the first fellows to participate in such a conquest of this kind.'
Back east the founder of the Appalachian Trail, Benton MacKaye, was a rather different figure, a supporter of the Soviet Union and a friend of Sinclair Lewis, John Reed, and Lewis Mumford. MacKaye believed his trail would provide a solution to the labor unrest of the period—much of which was led by Wobbly lumberjacks and miners—by offering land and work in government-owned towns, newly built along the trail in the forest; no less a man of his time than Clarke, MacKaye termed his scheme 'colonization.'"
I suppose proper west coast liberals will have to travel 3,000 miles east and use the Appalachian. Thank goodness, for those whose parental allowance won't support that expense, there are ANTIFA riots to keep them exercised and fit.