New edition of "Ramble On: A History of Hiking" released

Virtually no one went hiking before the 19th century. What occurred that inspired ordinary people to take a walk in the woods for pleasure?

While there are enough books about mountaineering to fill a small library, very little has been written on the rich and fascinating history of hiking. Ramble On: A History of Hiking is the first book to explore how hiking evolved into one of the world’s most popular outdoor recreational activities.

Extensively researched, this book provides a broad overview of the origins of hiking, as well as the cultural trends, movements, events, and innovations that spurred its growth and allowed it to eventually flourish.

This second edition of Ramble On: A History of Hiking builds upon the original to reflect additional research and to expand more broadly on a few key topics. For example, I wanted to provide a deeper understanding of how the Age of Enlightenment and the Romantic Era influenced art, aesthetics, literature, religion and thought, which in turn allowed hiking to bloom and eventually flourish. I also thought that it was important to chronicle in more detail the crucial role the multi-generational Crawford family of New Hampshire played in the development of hiking in America. This edition also explores how the term “hiking” surprisingly evolved after the Philippine-American War to assume the meaning we understand today.

Praise for the first edition:

"Doran weaves the social, cultural, industrial, and political milieu into this fascinating history. Amusing, astonishing, and sometimes alarming anecdotes .. make this a fascinating and significant account of the history of hiking."

- Priscilla Estes, Appalachian Footnotes, Winter 2018-2019, Delaware Valley Chapter of the Appalachian Mountain Club


This second edition on the history of hiking is now available on Amazon.

The Etymology of Hiking

The meaning of the word “hiking” took a rather long path for it to reach the meaning we understand today.

The following an excerpt from my new book, Ramble On: A History of Hiking:

During the last decade of John Muir’s life, the term “hiking” was just beginning to see usage as a word to describe the act of tramping through the woods. Muir, however, hated the word. Prior to the 20th century, the expression was a pejorative, or was used to describe walking in a vigorous manner, which Muir absolutely despised. To him, it meant to hurry, thus completely missing the point of immersing oneself in nature. In his book, The Mountain Trail and Its Message, published in 1911, Albert Palmer relayed a conversation he once had with Muir:

One day as I was resting in the shade Mr. Muir overtook me on the trail and began to chat in that friendly way in which he delights to talk with everyone he meets. I said to him: "Mr. Muir, someone told me you did not approve of the word 'hike.' Is that so?" His blue eyes flashed, and with his Scotch accent he replied: "I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not hike!

Palmer may have provided a definition of what it meant to "hike" at that point. In that same book he asserted that:

There are always some people in the mountains who are known as "hikers." They rush over the trail at high speed and take great delight in being the first to reach camp and in covering the greatest number of miles in the least possible time. They measure the trail in terms of speed and distance.

Perhaps that was an accurate description. On the other hand, it’s possible he may have conveyed a meaning that was already in the process of becoming outdated.

Over the years, many terms have been used to describe the act of walking in nature, such as hiking, rambling, sauntering, tramping, wandering, strolling, ambling, roaming, traipsing, marching and trekking. The first English term to describe this act was likely “rambling.” The word originally meant to wander, or roam aimlessly, but eventually evolved to describe hiking. The expression was widely used in England through the 19th century. It was also used in America for awhile, though much less frequently. While rambling is still occasionally used in the United Kingdom, it’s now mostly viewed as an old fashion term. Walking, hillwalking, fellwalking, and even hiking are more commonly used. Fellwalking, a word used to describe hiking in the mountains, comes from the English word fell or fjall, which is an Old Norse term that means mountain. In Victorian England, during the mid-1800s, wandering vagrants were derogatively known as tramps, a word that would eventually refer to hikers, and is now used by New Zealanders to describe backpacking. While tramping was widely used in America to describe hiking in the late 1800s and early 1900s, both John Muir and Henry David Thoreau were fond of using the term saunter.

Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, published in 1985, indicates that use of the word "hike" dates back to at least 1809; however, it had a different connotation at that time. It was originally meant "to move, pull or raise with a sudden motion" or “to travel by any means.” The dictionary indicates that by 1865 the word had adopted a new meaning, which they defined as "a long walk esp. for pleasure or exercise." Etymonline.com claims that “hike” comes from the English term “hyke,” which meant "to walk vigorously." The website notes that this word also dates back to 1809. They also quote a definition of the term from the 1830 edition of the Vocabulary of East Anglia: "to go away. It is generally used in a contemptuous sense Ex. 'Come, hike,' i.e. take yourself off; begone." Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present, published in 1893, defined the oldest meaning of the word as, “To move about. Also to carry off; to arrest.” A newer definition, from 1811, was updated to mean, “To hike off; to run away.” The slang dictionary then provided an example of a more contemporary use of the term, citing a quotation from the February 2, 1884, edition of the Daily Telegraph: “We three, not having any regler [sic] homes nor a steady job of work to stick to, HIKE ABOUT for a living, and we live in the cellar of a empty house.”

It appears the meaning of the word “hike” began to evolve during the Philippine-American War. This conflict began shortly after the conclusion of the brief Spanish-American War in 1898, which involved Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. Just weeks after the Spanish were expelled from the Philippines, fighting broke out between U.S. soldiers and Filipino nationalists. An article with the title, “The Vocabulary of the Philippines,” published in the August 19, 1899, edition of The Criterion, a weekly New York-based literary magazine, began with this highly illuminating passage:

Now that the volunteers are returning from the Philippines there is trouble ahead for the dictionary makers. It is a peculiarity of American slang that it is at once so concise, picturesque, and graphic that most new words of this kind eventually force their way, despite dissent, into the lexicon. The volunteers will bring back with them so many brand new expressions of this character that their vocabulary may prove all but incomprehensible. For the convenience of people who have not had the advantage of recent Philippine travel, and also for the future reference of our lexicographers, a short glossary, with comments, may be valuable.

One of the words most commonly used in this new dialect is “hike.” Its derivation is doubtful, but its descriptive power great and swift. “To hike” means to travel with amazing speed. It is generally used to give some idea of how fast the Filipinos can run when defeated in battle. Incidentally, “hiking” is a term applied to the speed which American soldiers are obliged to develop when trying to catch the fleeing Filipino. So, in a more general way, “hiking” is applied to any swift and fatiguing travel, while a “hiker” is obviously a man of hustling and enduring powers.

A review of several military-related publications from this era corroborates these definitions. Moreover, a comment in the March 2, 1901, edition of the Army and Navy Journal confirms that the terms were new to the broader civilian population in America: “Some time ago we referred to ‘hike’ and other expressive words which our boys in the field have added to our vocabulary.” It appears that soldiers used the term “hiking” to distinguish their mode of travel in this foreign land from traditional marching. As the fighting escalated, the Filipinos began engaging U.S. troops in guerrilla-style warfare. As a result, U.S. soldiers were often forced to bushwhack through dense jungles, grasslands, swamps and rice paddy fields. There are also several references to “hiking” along rugged mountain trails. What’s important to note is that both “hike” and “hiking” were scarcely used before the war, but quickly became part of the American lexicon in the years that immediately followed. Within a decade or so, the terms basically took on the meaning that we understand today. You can see how the definition evolved over a very short period of time. The 1903 edition of Supplement To A Standard Dictionary Of The English Language defined “Hike” as “The act of hiking; a weary journey on foot.” The 1911 edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary defined “hike” as the “Act of hiking; a tramp; march.” More importantly, within a few years of the conclusion of the war, references to hiking began to appear in several outdoor publications for the first time. The words “hike” and “hiker” were first used in the Sierra Bulletin, the journal of the Sierra Club, in 1905. The following passage from this edition obviously reflects the sentiment of John Muir:

There is the aristocrat of leg and lung, the “hiker,” so called, who walks up perpendicular cliffs like a fly, never misses the trail, and always reaches camp first. He is harmless, but is not generally loved, for he is a little overbearing and given to much talking of a certain catalogue of hours and distances which he keeps in his mind and calls his record.

We see additional uses of the three hiking-related expressions in subsequent issues of the Sierra Bulletin. Other examples of early usage of the terms include an article about “A Sierra Club Hike” in the August 6, 1909, edition of The California Weekly. One of the earliest uses of the phrase “hiking boots” appeared in an advertisement in the 1912 edition of The Mountaineer, the journal of The Mountaineers club out of Seattle. The October 1911 edition of The American Boy, the October 1912 edition of Boys Life, and The Boy Scout’s Hike Book from 1913 are all sprinkled with several references to hiking. Prior to 1910, most hiking clubs used the word "mountain" or "alpine" in their name. However, in that year, the Wanderlusters Hiking Club out of Washington D.C. became the first organization to use "hiking" in a club name.

The word “hiking” appears to have been adopted along the West Coast first, where it began to evolve into the meaning we understand today. The term and its related expressions were most likely introduced by veterans returning from the war in the Philippines. Indeed, the majority of troops returning from the Philippines passed through San Francisco, not far from the Sierra Club’s original headquarters. It’s fairly easy to speculate that the terms were likely introduced to the local population, and then members of the hiking community began borrowing them to describe the types of excursions they were taking in the nearby mountains. From the West Coast, the expressions spread across the rest of the country, which may have been the result of West Coast clubs sharing articles and correspondence with other clubs.

As the 20th century progressed, the expressions Thoreau and Muir preferred to use have mostly faded from the American lexicon. Nearly everyone in North America now uses the word “hiking.”



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Virtually no one went hiking before the 19th century. What occurred that inspired ordinary people to take a walk through the woods for pleasure? Ramble On: A History of Hiking explores the rich history of hiking, and how it evolved into one of the most popular pastimes in the world. This new edition on the history of hiking is now available on Amazon.

Why did hiking become so popular across the globe?

The following is an adaptation from Ramble On: A History of Hiking:

Since the dawn of mankind, humans have walked the planet to hunt, forage, explore, trade goods with neighboring communities, and migrate to other regions. At some point in our long evolution, we realized we didn’t need a utilitarian reason to walk. Somewhere along the line we discovered the joy of traipsing through the countryside, observing the beauty of a wildflower, watching wildlife in their natural habitat, marveling at the roar of a waterfall, or contemplating the scenic grandeur from the top of a mountain. Is this a fairly recent phenomenon, or is this an innate characteristic of human beings?

While history has preserved a few examples of men scaling mountains for an assortment of reasons prior to the early modern era, these feats appear to be extremely rare. Before the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, mountains were commonly seen as dangerous and mysterious by most Western cultures, at least according to prevailing wisdom. People from the Middle Ages purportedly regarded them with fear, loathing and superstition. Moreover, they thought the alpine world was inhabited by evil spirits, witches, wild beasts and bandits. Some men even swore affidavits before magistrates that they had seen dragons in the mountains.

However, as the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods progressed and spread across Europe, fear of mountains slowly began to subside, and more men began venturing into the highlands. Several modern historians contend that attitudes towards mountains started to shift as a result of the religious and philosophical tenets of natural theology, which proposed that God is revealed through reason and nature, rather than sacred texts, divine revelation or supernatural beliefs. They argue that individuals from this era began to realize that fear and loathing of mountains wasn’t justified. The perception that they were inherently dark and evil inevitably changed after it was understood that it was God who had created them. Consequently, people started viewing mountains as images of the Creator, as sources of spiritual inspiration, or even as proof of God’s existence. Leslie Stephen, on the other hand, claimed that attitudes simply evolved in conjunction with the revolution in ideas and thinking that occurred during the Age of Enlightenment. As one of the most famous British climbers from the “Golden Age of Alpinism,” Stephen argued in 1868 that "The history of mountaineering is, to a great extent, the history of the process by which men have gradually conquered the phantoms of their own imagination."

By the mid-1700s, we begin to see the first documented rambling and walking excursions. While the historical record seemingly indicates that mountaineering preceded hiking by several decades, or even centuries, it doesn’t necessarily mean that people didn’t hike or walk for recreational purposes prior to this timeframe. Rather, it seems more likely that those who did set out on foot never would’ve considered a leisurely walk in the countryside to be a noteworthy event. Therefore, very few individuals would’ve taken the time to record their rambles for posterity, even if they were literate. As a result, hiking doesn’t have a date of birth, or even an approximated timeframe for its origins. It seems most likely that walking for pleasure has always been a natural form of recreation that evolved over time to a point where individuals began to take it more seriously, whereupon we begin to see the first descriptions of walking excursions in diaries, letters, poems and travelogues.

The roots of hiking and walking for pleasure were firmly established by the late 1700s, especially in Great Britain and certain parts of Europe. However, during the earlier part of the century, walking was generally looked down upon. “Respectable” citizens during this era usually rode in carriages or on horseback to travel any significant distances. For the most part only the poor walked. In Victorian England, during the mid-1800s, wandering vagrants were derogatively known as tramps, a word that would eventually refer to hikers, and now used by New Zealanders to describe backpacking.

While overcoming the fear of mountains, and the gradual breakdown in the social stigmas associated with walking certainly enabled mountaineering and hiking to germinate, I would argue that the single most important event to spur the development of hiking and walking for pleasure was the Industrial Revolution. The social changes brought about by industrialization were profound. As I explain in more detail in my book, industrialization triggered a massive backlash from certain segments of society, which inspired movements in art, philosophy and religion. These movements, in turn, would motivate people in one way or another to visit wilderness areas for recreational purposes. As industrialization progressed, especially in America, it gave rise to the labor movement, which eventually resulted in increased wages, and significant reductions in the number of hours worked each week. Thus, workers began to enjoy more free time, many of whom pursued recreation in the great outdoors. Industrialization also gave rise to railroads, automobiles and roads, which provided people with the ability to travel more easily to wilderness areas. As a result of these social transformations and movements, hiking emerged as a pastime. Though it was just a fringe activity in the early 1800s, the sport grew steadily through the Great Depression. After World War II, however, it exploded, and has now become one of the world's most popular outdoor activities.

You can learn more about the history of hiking on my author page.


Other excerpts from Ramble On:

* The Etymology of Hiking

* The Historic Circle Tours of Glacier National Park

* Women’s Hiking Attire During The Victorian Era

* The Evolution of Hiking Boots



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Virtually no one went hiking before the 19th century. What occurred that inspired ordinary people to take a walk through the woods for pleasure? Ramble On: A History of Hiking explores the rich history of hiking, and how it evolved into one of the most popular pastimes in the world.