Raymond
H. TorreyRaymond
H. TorreyRaymond H. Torrey (1880-1938) received the Pugsley Silver Medal in 1938. He was a New York newspaperman, was a prolific writer, tireless trailblazer, exuberant hiker, unyielding conservationist, volunteer organizer, political lobbyist and diplomat. It was Torrey’s genius for organization that put the first miles of the Appalachian Trail on the ground, converting Benton MacKaye’s "crackpot" dream into a walker’s reality. Nearly forgotten today except within his home territory of New York and New Jersey, he was the archetypal volunteer organizer and trail builder.
Torrey was born in Georgetown, Massachusetts, in 1880. His father was a sea captain and on his father’s side, he was related to John Torrey, a noted American botanist. While still in grammar school, he became acquainted with Mr. & Mrs. Horner, local botanists, who were employed by Harvard College to collect specimens for use in botany classes. He joined them after school and on weekends on forays into the Massachusetts hills in search of specimens. Over time it became necessary to go further and further afield to collect some specimens, as a result of indiscriminate collecting and development. This alerted Torrey not only to the joys of hiking, but also to the urgency of the need for conservation and protection of native flora. He graduated from high school in 1896, and took jobs with a number of small Massachusetts newspapers. He moved to New York in 1903. There he worked as a reporter, rewrite-man and night manager with several major city papers before establishing himself at the New York Evening Post in 1918.
By 1904, Torrey had become active in the New York hiking scene. In those days, the trailless forests, fields, mountains and meadows of the Hudson Highlands were being discovered by restless urbanites eager to escape the noise and stress of city life. Metropolitan hiking clubs attracted thousands to their membership, and it was the likable Raymond Torrey who energized and unified them.
In 1920, Major William Welch, (Pugsley Medal recipient in 1934) General Manager of the Palisades Interstate Park, recognized the need for a trail network in Bear Mountain-Harriman State Parks, but he lacked funds to build it. Welch contacted Torrey and asked him to use his influence as a journalist to help weld New York metro hiking clubs into a volunteer trail-making confederation called the Palisades Interstate Park Trail Conference. At that time, Torrey authored a popular weekly outdoor column for the New York Evening Post, entitled the Long Brown Path (named for a line in Whitman's "Song of the Open Road"). His articles quickly made Welch's new confederation a success and his friendship with Welch resulted in an informal partnership that created 24 miles of new trail by the spring of 1921. Welch laid out trail routes and provided logistical support for Torrey who organized and coordinated volunteers to build the trails.
There has probably never been a phenomenon like Torrey’s "Long Brown Path" column in the New York Evening Post. Throughout the 1920s and until Torrey’s sudden death in 1938, it was universally read by New York hikers. Aside from news of the clubs and trails, especially new ones, answers to readers’ questions, and assorted editorial comments, the most important feature was the weekly listing of hikes. As many as twenty or thirty trip notices, from almost as many different clubs, would appear in these listings. He also used the column to rail against litter, a chronic problem in the 1920s and 1930s. “The Interstate Park, one of the greatest boons to humanity ever provided by private munificence and state support… is carpeted with newspapers and rubbish,” he complained. The column was used to urge the preservation of the Adirondacks and Catskills. He informed readers of conservation bills coming to a vote in the New York and New Jersey legislatives. He organized letter-writing campaigns to support reforestation measures and appropriation bills proposing new parks.
In 1921 when Benton MacKaye made a proposal for a ridge top trail stretching from Maine to Georgia, Torrey stepped forward to champion the 2,100-mile path. He again used his writing skills, and put the Appalachian Trail squarely in the limelight. On April 7, 1922, the Post ran a full page banner headline proclaiming: "A Great Trail from Maine to Georgia!" Torrey’s story was a national call to arms and galvanized volunteers.
Just days later, at a meeting attended by Benton MacKaye, the Palisades Interstate Park Trail Conference was reorganized as the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, and J. Ashton Allis (a New York banker and outdoorsman who had already proposed a trail from the Delaware Water Gap into New England) asked for volunteers to scout the 160-mile A.T. route from Kent, Connecticut, to the Delaware River. While pieces of the A.T. (the Long Trail in Vermont and AMC’s New Hampshire trail network), already existed, this would be the first new A.T. section built.
Torrey was not bound to his typewriter and desk. He was out on the trail as much as the most faithful of his hiking readers, cutting or flagging new trail, maintaining old, helping a new club get off to a good start, or scouting potential new routes. By autumn, 1923, Torrey and Allis were ready to unveil the first six miles of Appalachian Trail, running from the Ramapo River to Fingerboard Mountain. Progress south continued at a rapid pace. By January 4, 1924, Torrey’s squads had completed 20 miles of A.T., stretching from the Hudson to the Ramapo Rivers. Then on November 18, 1924 Torrey surpassed all his past trail blazing records. He led the Tramp & Trail Club in what he called a "Speed Special" clearing an A.T. section through Sterling Forest, New York. By day's end these A.T. enthusiasts had cleared and blazed their way up and down peaks, around ledges, through wetlands and over slippery, newly-fallen leaves, covering an astounding twenty miles. They ended the walk in darkness using flashlights.
Within months, the new trail crossed from New York into the New Jersey Highlands, where the task became more challenging. Here complex negotiations with numerous private property owners were required. By 1929, Torrey and his fellow enthusiasts had gained the help of New Jersey state park officials and built an A.T. section stretching from the Delaware River to High Point, 43 miles of trail running the length of the Kittatinny Range. Meanwhile, Torrey joined with Murray H. Stevens and Ned Anderson in running the path north from the Hudson. By about 1931, the A.T. was open from the Delaware River to Kent, Connecticut, 160-miles of newly created treadway.
Torrey spearheaded the effort to establish a network of volunteers to keep the A.T. in good condition. Through tireless example, and voluminous correspondence, he fostered a volunteer network to which he passed on his passion for the outdoors. He was a Renaissance man whose interests ranged through every imaginable natural topic. He wrote one of the first A.T. guidebooks, Guide to the Appalachian Trail, demonstrating his firsthand knowledge of the trail from the Housatonic to the Susquehanna River. This 1934 classic set the standard for later hiking guides. He also coauthored the New York Walk Book in 1934 which was well received.
His scientific knowledge was vast. Torrey could write with the same authority and enthusiasm about short-billed marsh wrens as about "a new Silurian marine fossil found atop Kittatinny Ridge." He could identify at least 700 plants. In 1920, he became active in the Torrey Botanical Club and his subsequent leadership role in this organization did much to maintain the tradition established and furthered by his ancestor, John Torrey and Nathaniel Britton (Pugsley Medal 1929). The numerous articles and notes in Torreya attested to his enthusiasm for botany, especially for boreal plants found on high elevations in the New York area. He became an authority on lichens which were profuse in the area, and his enthusiasm for them stimulated investigation of them by others. He had an extensive collection of species and a library relating to them and made the Cladonia class of lichens his specialty. He mastered French and German just so he could read foreign language lichen texts.
Some years prior to his death, Torrey gave up newspaper work, except for “The Long Brown Patch” column and became secretary of the Association for the Preservation of the Adirondacks, and secretary of the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society. Like William Welch, he was a prominent founder of the National Conference of State Parks and in 1925 he was asked by this group to do a survey of state parks throughout the United States, publishing an exhaustive report in 1926. He also became head of the Associated Mountaineering Clubs of North America and soon made its magazine, Mountain, a widely read and quoted source.
Raymond Torrey died of a heart attack in July 1938, stunning the A.T. community. No one person could replace him at the NY-NJ Trail Conference. Instead a committee was organized to do the work Torrey had once done himself. His friends gathered to place a memorial on top of Long Mountain in Harriman Park. This was a mountain over which Torrey had helped blaze the trail in 1922 declaring it had “one of the finest views… in the entire Highlands.” The inscription read "In Memory of Raymond H. Torrey, A Great Disciple of the ‘Long Brown Path’ 1880-1938."