Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail by Ben Montgomery
On May 2, 1955 Emma Gatewood, a 67 year-old grandmother from rural Ohio, told her family she was “going for a walk”. And she did. The next they heard from her she was 800 miles into a journey that would take her 2,050 miles along one of the longest hiking trails in the world. Nicknamed “Grandma Gatewood” by reporters, she became the first woman to hike the entire Appalachian Trail in one season (as well as the first person to hike it twice and the first to do it three times) bringing to the attention of the wider world a piece of Americana that would otherwise likely have faded and been forgotten.