The entire purpose of the AT when it was devised by MacKaye, was to bring people back to nature, and to renew the city dweller's relationship with the natural world, by means of hiking. And this is exactly, in one way or another, what the AT has done. While the trail has been around now for over 80 years, the increase in hikers, and humans in the Appalachian mountains has been somewhat of a sudden influx of people relative to what the southern Appalachians had previously been exposed to. Human activity in the southern Appalachians had also historically been geographically isolated- farming, mining, limber production, livestock work- all occurred in a stable location. The introduction of the trail meant the introduction of a constantly mobile human presence.

As the trail became more popular over the years, and developed its own separate community and culture, one of the most common choices for long-distances hikers to make, is whether to hike northbound, or southbound (NoBo vs. SoBo). Northbound hikers significantly outweigh the number of southbound hikers that the trail has seen, and consequentially much of the negative environmental impact along the AT is seen in the southern Appalachians.