Road Walking in Massachusetts 50 years ago, today 11 June 1975.

 Road walking was common on the AT in the early days.  RELOs (relocations) would force the trail out of the woods onto dirt (and sometimes paved) roads for miles in just about every state.  States with miles or road walking, besides those who cut thru a town, were Virginia (probably 60 miles), Pennsylvania (20 miles), New Jersey and New York (40 miles), Massachusetts (20 miles) and even Maine where Tote Roads were the Trail for decades.

Crossing Valleys, like this one in Massachusetts was done on a road. Here are some pics of the once AT before the National Park Service bought a protected corridor for our trail. Notice the white blazing on the telephone poles.

And here was the topo for this road.

The topo from 1973 showed the trail off the road, but that was not the case in 1975.

Later that day, in Beartown Mountain State Forest, more road walking on Brace Road.

Brace Road was the route into Tyringham, where I camped at the Community Pavillon with Les from NJ.