A group of hikers at Indian Gap at the end of a three-day hike, September 5, 1938. Indian Gap is the main north/south gap through the Great Smoky Mountains.

Albert Gordon "Dutch" Roth, Carlos Campbell, Guy Frizzell, Myron Avery (with measuring wheel), and Oliver Crowder on hike from Newfound Gap to Deals Gap. May 29-31, 1931.

Photograph of five hikers, June 4, 1933, by Albert (Dutch) Roth.

Members of the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club enjoying the big chestnut tree stop, March 5, 1932. Before the Chestnut Blight wiped out almost all American Chestnut trees in the Eastern United States, trees of this size were not uncommon along the Appalachian Trail.

The Silers Bald Shelter, April 27, 1941. A master list of AT shelters published in the July 1939 edition of the Appalachian Trailway News describes this shelter as "authorized: plans or work being proceeded with." Thus, it was built between the summer of 1939 and the spring of 1941 when this image was taken by Albert Roth. Silers Bald Shelter is located on the North Carolina side of the Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, just south of Clingman's Dome, and is maintained by the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club.

The Blood Mountain Shelter was built in 1937 by the Civilian Conservation Corps for the Georgia State Parks system. In 1956, the shelter was transferred to the U.S. Forest Service, and is maintained by the Georgia Appalachian Trail Club, whose members carried out a major renovation of the structure in 2010 [current image]

Appalachian Trail Sign, Plum Orchard Gap, Georgia, just south of the North Carolina/Georgia border.

A small group of volunteer trail maintainers on the Appalachian Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, May 19, 1947. The Appalachian Trail is unique among America's long distance hiking trails in that it is maintained almost exclusively by groups of volunteers from the many trail clubs that take care of the Trail along its more than 2,000 mile course.

Marking the Appalachian Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Albert Roth is adding one of the original AT blaze signs to the trail route just south of Clingman's Dome.

Myron Avery during a survey of the route of the Appalachian Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.