A trail maintainer along the Appalachian Trail in 1932. The caption on the reverse of this photograph reads: "Homeward bound, with her pack and pruning shears after a day's work on the Appalachian Trail." Trail volunteers like this young woman were, and remain, essential to the building and maintaining of the Appalachian Trail.

Members of one of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC) Shenandoah National Park trail crews creating water diversions on one of the many trails in the Park. Members of Appalachian Trail maintaining clubs devote hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours each year to the maintenance of the AT and its associated side trails.

A member of the Philadelphia Trail Club clipping vegetation along the Appalachian Trail, March 23, 1935, on the Little Gap, PA section of the Trail. Club members "cut scrub oak and cleared nearly half a mile through the thickest growth," and later, "paint[ed] blazes all the way through to meet the blazes in from Smith Gap," according to a report of the trail work weekend. This work weekend was one of many that the Philadelphia Trail Club utilized to build their short section of the Trail in 1935.

Photograph of a large group of members of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club during a hike on the Appalachian Trail in the early 1930s. Club co-founder Myron Avery is pictured to the left with his famous measuring wheel and Frank Schairer, another co-founder and the club's first supervisor of trails is to Avery's left with clippers draped over his head.