The First Woman to Thru-Hike the Appalachian Trail Alone Did It as a ‘Lark’
The First Woman to Thru-Hike the Appalachian Trail Alone Did It as a ‘Lark’
Emma Gatewood set out wearing sneakers, with a duffel slung over one shoulder.
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On April 4, 1948, Army veteran Earl Shaffer set out from the southern end of the Appalachian Trail (AT) to, as he famously said, “walk the war out of my system.” When he finished at the northern terminus, Maine’s Mt. Katahdin, 124 days later, Shaffer became the first person known to have thru-hiked the 2,000 mile-plus trail that snakes its way up the mountainous spine of the eastern United States. Less than a decade later, a 67-year-old grandmother laced up not hiking boots but sneakers, and became the first woman to thru-hike the trail on her own*. While Shaffer’s journey of finding redemption on the trail is better known, Emma Gatewood’s trek is just as compelling: After a lifetime of dire hardship, she was simply drawn to the freedom of a long walk.
Gatewood, unlike most thru-hikers of the Appalachian Trail, was actually from Appalachia, the southern highland region defined by both its steep terrain and distinct social economy. She grew up among the Allegheny foothills of far southeastern Ohio, and her everyday environment had much more in common with that of West Virginia, just across the Ohio River, than with the agricultural flatlands and industrial cities of the rest of her home state.
She was born Emma Caldwell in Gallia County in 1887, the 12th of 15 children, and grew up on a succession of farms as her family moved repeatedly in search of better opportunities. For the Caldwells and the thousands of people who scratched out a living in the hills, unlike their counterparts in towns and cities, the outdoors was a workplace from which to wrest a livelihood, not a patch of scenery to admire and explore. At 18, she was earning 75 cents a week as live-in help when she met P. C. Gatewood. The two got married in the spring of 1907. Almost from day one of their marriage, according to her descendant and biographer, Ben Montgomery, Emma Gatewood’s husband viewed her as a possession, and violence as his means of control. After he hit her for the first time, according to Montgomery: She thought of leaving him that day and that night and on into the next, but where would she go? She had no paying job, no savings, and her education had ended in the eighth grade. She couldn’t return home and be a burden on her mother, who remained busy rearing children. So she bit her tongue and stayed with P.C.
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https://www.atlasobscura.com/article...-emma-gatewood
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