100 Years Later: Revisiting Benton MacKaye's 1921 article,
“An Appalachian Trail: A Project in Regional Planning”- Part 3
An Undeveloped Power – Our Spare Time
Benton Mackaye asked, “How much spare time have we, and how much power does it represent?”
With a typical American two-week allocation of annual time for vacation or time off, that time can be spent doing things of our own choice. He assessed that if one million people took one percent of that vacation time it could be devoted to increasing the facilities for an outdoor community life.
With much of the undeveloped land in the east coast where the highest concentration of the populations exists, some of this land could be designated as community camps. This undeveloped land consisting of several National Forests formed the Appalachian chain of mountains and are within a day’s ride from centers of these large populations from New England to the cotton belt.
He felt it might be worthwhile to devote some energy by utilizing our spare time to develop various opportunities along the Appalachian Skyline. Therefore, the use of our spare time could be a project to develop the opportunities for recreation, recuperation, and employment, creating a series of recreational communities throughout the Appalachian chain of mountains from New England to Georgia, connected by a walking trail. Its purpose is to establish a base for a more extensive and systematic development of outdoor community life as a project in housing and community architecture.
