Long Trail Photographs

The Long Trail Collection includes over 900 images of the oldest long-distance hiking trail in the United States: Vermont’s Long Trail. The collection is mainly comprised of black-and-white and hand-colored lantern slides derived from photographs taken between 1912 and 1937. It documents the Green Mountain Club’s building of original trails and shelters and illustrates the enthusiasm for the Long Trail project (and hiking in general) at the turn of the century. These images chronicle the views and landscapes seen by early hikers of the Long Trail and provide an historical record of people associated with the Green Mountain Club’s formative years. The images in this collection were captured by Green Mountain Club members Theron S. Dean and Herbert Wheaton Congdon, both of whom were early contributors to the trail’s development. Congdon surveyed and mapped a large portion of the early trail including a fifty mile stretch from Middlebury Gap to Bolton. Congdon, along with Leroy Little and Clarence Cowles, is also credited with the first winter ascent of Mount Mansfield on February 21, 1920. Dean is perhaps the most prolific documenter of the Long Trail’s development. Dean traveled throughout Vermont presenting slideshows and giving talks about the Long Trail, often to hundreds of people. A number of the original lantern slides in this collection were used by Congdon and Dean in their Long Trail presentations. Dean in particular meticulously cultivated his lantern slide collection and displayed these slides during his many talks. The original slides can be viewed in the Dean and Congdon collections at the University of Vermont Silver Special Collections Library. More information about the Long Trail can be obtained from the Green Mountain Club. The slides were scanned by the University's Landscape Change Program with the generous support of the National Science Foundation. The digitized photographs also appear in the Landscape Change image database at: http://www.uvm.edu/landscape/

Showing 1 - 10 of 116 Records

Cowles and Little in camp at Smugglers' Notch
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    • Date Created: 1920-02-22 00:00:00
    • Parent Collections: Long Trail Photographs


    Cowles and Little climbing the Taft Trail - Mount Madonna in the distance
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      • Date Created: 1920-02-20 00:00:00
      • Parent Collections: Long Trail Photographs


      Falls on Joiner Brook - one mile from Bolton
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        • Date Created: 1920-08
        • Parent Collections: Long Trail Photographs


        Near the Taft Lodge on Mount Mansfield
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          • Date Created: 1920-02-22 00:00:00
          • Parent Collections: Long Trail Photographs


          Jeffersonville Depot
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            • Date Created: 1920-02-20 00:00:00
            • Parent Collections: Long Trail Photographs


            Congdon, Cowles and Little at lunch at the foot of Dead Horse Hill on Mount Mansfield
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              • Date Created: 1920-02-20 00:00:00
              • Parent Collections: Long Trail Photographs


              L.L. Little in a camp pit on Smugglers' Notch
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                • Date Created: 1920-02-22 00:00:00
                • Parent Collections: Long Trail Photographs


                Road from Jeffersonville to Morse's Mill
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                  • Date Created: 1920-02-20 00:00:00
                  • Parent Collections: Long Trail Photographs


                  Camel's Hump from a ruined mill clearing near Dunsmoor Lodge on Bolton
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                    • Date Created: 1920-08-24 00:00:00
                    • Description: The person in the image is not identified. Camel's Hump was also referred to as "Couching Lion."
                    • Parent Collections: Long Trail Photographs


                    Camel's Hump from a road 1/2 mile north of Bolton
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                      • Date Created: 1920-08
                      • Description: Camel's Hump was previously referred to also as "Couching Lion."
                      • Parent Collections: Long Trail Photographs