Hiking wasn’t always the fashionable pastime it is today. Before the Subarus and the Jeeps and the Patagonias built an industry around the activity, walking of any kind was considered an activity for the impoverished or the vagrant. The Romantic era of the Victorian years inspired the likes of Walden and Thoreau to reconnect with nature, and that, in turn, inspired the landscape architects to design parks with excellent walking trails (looking at you, Frederick Law Olmsted of Central Park fame). Walking then became something of the educated, the unhurried, the luxurious. 

Until John Muir came along and walked his way through the Sierra Nevadas in California and demanded that not only hiking, walking, meandering, sojourning, whatever you want to call it, be accessible to every American citizen, but that the country should actively preserve natural areas of pristine ecology and beauty. In 1890, he petitioned to create the National Park System, and we were endowed with “America’s best idea” – Yosemite and Sequoia National Park. But even before Muir, on the east coast, a small group of people had banded together in 1876 to form the Appalachian Mountain Club, which aimed to protect and preserve all hiking trails along the historic mountain range and develop new ones. 

:https://nationaltoday.com/national-hiking-day/