It was at Lake Junaluska in 1977. Howard Lee, who headed the Department of Natural Resources and Community Development, addressed the Fourth National Trails Symposium at the invitation of a small group charged with advising the state on the matter of trails.
“I want our State Trails Committee to look at recommending a trail that would give North Carolina and national visitors using it a real feel for the sights, sounds, and people of the state…Like the first primitive trails, it would help bring us together.”
A state trails committee had been appointed to plan a cross-state trail, piecing together land from national, state, city, and county parks and permission from private landowners to allow the trail to cross their property. Seven years later, a 75.8-mile trail along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore became the first segment of the trail to be dedicated.
Groups of local volunteers were formed across the state to help blaze trails that would eventually be connected as one. The procedure was carefully executed: After securing the land for a section of the trail, a route planner mapped out the path. An archaeologist walked the proposed route, taking soil samples to ensure the trail wouldn’t disturb artifacts or burial grounds. A biologist conducted a survey to determine whether the trail would have a negative effect on rare plants or animals.
Once the route was cleared, volunteers began the physical labor of clearing brush and setting the path. The trail grew slowly in the 1980s and 1990s, with existing trails incorporated whenever possible. Cape Hatteras served as an eastern anchor although most of the early work was in the western part of the state.
Putting together private property easements across the state was no easy task while the work of building the trail was bogged down in bureaucratic efforts. Since the state had allocated no money for the Mountains-to-Sea Trail project, state officials suggested a less ambitious project, connecting local trails rather than one long continuous trail across the state.
Allen de Hart, a professor at Louisburg University who had walked thousands of miles on trails in half a dozen other states, strongly objected. The trail would be no hodgepodge of existing trails, he said. In response, he created the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail (FMST), an organization dedicated to creating a new trail to cross the state. In 1997, he and hiker Alan Householder completed a hike of an incomplete trail, demonstrating the project’s viability.
Meanwhile, FMST provided a way for citizens to get directly involved in trail creation and maintenance. With FMST support, work on the trail progressed into the new millennium at an average rate of 15 miles of trail annually. As the work of the FMST became appreciated, the Trail was designated as a state park in 2000.
But there were problems. One was the route from Stone Mountain State Park to New Bern. No progress was made on this long stretch of trail because of disagreement over the route. It was finally established through a collaborative effort involving the State Parks, local governments, and citizen volunteers who agreed on a preferred route. In 2008, the state committed $8.5 million to purchase four tracts of land along this stretch of trail, a critical piece of route planning and funding which allowed the FMST to create a new trail across the Piedmont.
When complete, the Mountains to the Sea Trail will stretch in one continuous path across the state from Clingman’s Dome, the highest peak in Smoky Mountains National Park, to Jockey’s Ridge State Park, a 420-acre sand dune system on the Outer Banks.
In the west, the trail climbs over Mount Mitchell, the highest point in the eastern United State at 6,684 feet. It crosses Linville Gorge, a deep and rugged gorge known as the Grand Canyon of North Carolina, and passes through three national parks (the Great Smoky Mountains, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and Cape Hatteras), three national forests, two national wildlife refuges, seven state parks, and a variety of county and local parks as it winds its way across the state.
As of December 2015, more than 620 miles of the 1150-mile Mountains-to-Sea Trail have been completed. FMST trail crews continue to build on a new trail in the mountains, the Piedmont Triad, and the Triangle around Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. Recent work on the Falls Lake trail, first dedicated in the 1980s, has doubled that stretch of trail to fifty miles. Sections of over twenty miles have also been added along Greensboro’s watershed lakes and between Pilot Mountain and Hanging Rock State Parks.
Because the incomplete parts of the route follow roads, the trail can be hiked across the entire state, requiring two to three months and leading hikers through 37 counties with 40 percent of the state’s population. Eighteen people have hiked the entire trail as the number of thru-hikers has increased as the trail has gained visibility.
Not even the planners can say for sure when the trail will be finished; however, they are confident it will fulfill Howard Lee’s vision of a trail that will serve as “a legacy to future generations”.
Of the thousand miles snaking across the state, only about 500 are what you’d call a trail, marked with a circular, white blaze, officially designated by the state.The Mountains-to-Sea Trail is a people experience. When you hike the MST, you really know North Carolina: the mountain culture, the farming culture, the city culture, the Coastal Plain, the swamp people, the beach, and all that wonderful terrain. It’s not just looking at trees and scenic mountain terrain.
Thanks to Kate Dixon, Executive Director of the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, for help in developing this article. She can be reached at FMTS office in Raleigh (919-698-9024).