Along Virginia's Appalachian Trail (Images of America Series) »

Author Leonard M. Adkins has hiked the entire Appalachian Trail five times and is the author of 15 books about the outdoors and travel, including four concerning the trail. He has aided the Appalachian Trail Conservancy in identifying and protecting rare and endangered plants by being a Natural Heritage Monitor and a ridge runner. He has also been on the Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club's board of directors and a volunteer maintainer of a trail section near McAfee Knob.

The Appalachian Trail was proposed by Benton MacKaye in 1921. Over a quarter of the Georgia-to-Maine pathway passes through Virginia, going across some of the state's best mountain scenery and affording access to small-town life. Now a component of the National Park Service, the trail was, and still is, primarily built, maintained, and overseen by volunteers. Selected from the archives of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, the National Park Service, and local Appalachian Trail maintenance clubs, the approximately 200 photographs in Images of America: Along Virginia's Appalachian Trail provide a look at life in the mountains before and during the trail's creation, how it developed, who its early champions were, the many relocations the trail has experienced, and the volunteers who have constructed and maintained it.