Grandma Gatewood's Walk

In Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail (2012), author Ben Montgomery describes the stirring journey of Emma Gatewood, a 67-year old grandmother who, in 1955, became the first woman to hike the entire Appalachian Trail alone. Montgomery draws on interviews with Gatewood’s family members and individuals she met on the trail, as well as maps, photographs, and Gatewood’s trail journals and diaries to describe Gatewood’s 2,050-mile expedition. In the biography, Montgomery also details Gatewood’s life as a hardworking farmer’s wife and her painful experiences with decades of physical abuse. Montgomery intersperses Gatewood’s story with significant historical background about important events of the era, such as the development of the interstate highway system, the Communist scare, and segregation. Grandma Gatewood’s Walk won the 2014 National Outdoor Book Award for History/Biography.

Emma Gatewood was born in 1887, in the small town of Mercerville in southern Ohio. In 1907, she married P.C. Gatewood, a teacher eight years her senior. Gatewood worked hard on their farm, cooking, cleaning, caring for their eleven children, and doing tasks that P.C. demanded of her like building fences and hauling rocks. Within three months of their marriage, P.C. became physically abusive to the point of battering her face and breaking her teeth and ribs. While he didn’t strike their children, he was violent to Gatewood in front of them. He would convince neighbors that he was innocent of wrongdoing and suggest that she was insane. In 1941, after thirty-five years of marriage and abuse, Emma Gatewood divorced P.C. She received custody of the children and control of their farm.

In a dentist’s office, Gatewood read an article about the Appalachian Trail in the August 1949 issue of National Geographic. She couldn’t get the article out of her mind; the trail seemed like a “window to another place.” She also read that at the time, only six men—no women—had hiked the trail in a continuous journey. Gatewood was determined to change that. She bided her time until she could attempt the trail herself. She had always loved to walk in the countryside and began preparing for her big hike by walking up to ten miles a day. She also saved money until she could draw the minimum on her social security: $52 a month.



On May 3, 1955, Gatewood traveled by bus, plane, and cab from Ohio to the southern-most terminus of the Appalachian Trail atop Mount Oglethorpe in Georgia. There, “Emma Gatewood stood alone, an old woman on a mountain.” Only the cab driver that dropped her off, and her cousin, Myrtle Trowbridge, knew her plans. Gatewood had simply told her grown children she was “going for a walk.” They didn’t know where she was until 800 miles into her trip.

Gatewood was 5 foot 2 inches tall and weighed 150 pounds at the start of her hike. She traveled light. In the hand-stitched denim drawstring sack she used for a backpack, she carried only some Vienna Sausage, raisins, peanuts, bouillon cubes, and powdered milk for food. She added band-Aids, iodine, bobby pins and a jar of Vicks VapoRub, as well as slippers, a warm coat, a shower curtain to keep off the rain, some drinking water, a flashlight, a Swiss Army knife, some mints, and her pen and notebook. She did not even have a sleeping bag. Gatewood confides that she had made an abortive attempt at the trail the year before and wouldn’t be caught unprepared again.

As Gatewood walked, she discovered that the “tricky, treacherous” part of the hike she hadn’t prepared for was “scouting for a bed among strangers.” Some people turned her away, and many nights she spent in makeshift shelters under picnic benches, or even resorted to heating smooth rocks in her campfire and sleeping on them to stay warm. Other times she spent nights in churches, trail shelters, or at the homes of generous individuals. Montgomery describes the great beauty and great danger Gatewood experienced on her hike. She was struck by a rattlesnake, but fortunately, its fangs did not penetrate her dungarees. She had run-ins with wild dogs, was plagued by bunions, called a “lady tramp,” tried to keep bugs at bay by putting sassafras leaves in her sunshade, and encountered all kinds of inclement weather. She hiked through seven pairs of shoes (mostly Keds), broke multiple pairs of glasses, and suffered from a bad knee. Parts of the trail had fallen into disrepair, were flooded, or unmarked. Still, she kept going, saying, “After the hard life I have lived…this trail isn’t so bad.”



Along the way, Gatewood asked herself what she would say when people asked her why she was making this difficult journey. Sometimes, she answered that it “seemed like a good lark,” or “because it was there.” Local, then national news discovered her story and began meeting her along the trail for interviews and photos.

On September 25, 1955, Gatewood finished her hike. After spraining her ankle, bruising her eye, and breaking her glasses, “hobbling nearly blind for the last leg of the trail,” Gatewood made it to the top of Mount Katahdin, where she sang the first verse of “America the Beautiful.” She commented, “I said I’d do it, and I’ve done it.”

Montgomery describes his own efforts to follow in Gatewood’s shoes by hiking the last part of the trail up Mount Katahdin. Montgomery writes that Gatewood became a hiking celebrity. She was featured in Sports Illustrated and appeared on the NBC Today Show. Her story drew national attention to the trail, which led to its increased popularity and expanded trail maintenance. Gatewood hiked the Appalachian Trail two more times and later went on to hike the 2,000-mile Oregon Trail. Montgomery notes that Gatewood is also credited with pioneering “ultra-light” hiking. In the conclusion to Grandma Gatewood’s Walk, Montgomery takes Gatewood’s then 86-year-old daughter Louise hiking. Together they walk the Grandma Gatewood Trail in Ohio’s Hocking Hills State Park, named in honor of her mother.