Green Mountain Club

Website Links

Description

The Green Mountain Club is a non-profit trail management, education, and conservation organization with more than 10,000 members and 1,000 volunteers. The club relies heavily on the private support of its members and supporters to be able to maintain more than 500 miles of hiking trails in Vermont. The Green Mountain Club was established on March 11, 1910 in the Sample Room of the Van Ness House, kitty-corner from City Hall Park in Burlington, Vt. Twenty-three Vermonters met to hear from James Paddock Taylor about his idea for a long trail and a group that might build and maintain it.

The club has sought to provide educational experiences to children and opportunities to parents and teachers to use the trail as a classroom. The club established the Long Trail Bound program as a means to this end. The club’s staff and volunteers work with school groups, summer camps, and other gatherings to teach children outdoor skills – like using a compass – as well as skills they can utilize to learn from and enjoy their own experiences in the woods.

The caretaker program began in 1920 and went until the early 1940s (World War II). Early club caretakers spend their summers and falls living in and working around Long Trail camps and lodges. For a small fee, these GMC staffers helped keep the lodges in good shape, take care of trail work nearby, and make sure there was firewood – and later kerosene – available for hikers to cook their meals on the stoves that Long Trail lodges used to have*. The early caretakers were paid by the small fees ($0.50 in the 1930s) they collected and by selling food and blankets to hikers.

Products & services

Similar companies nearby