History of Emma Grandma Gatewood

History of Emma Grandma Gatewood

Emma was born in Guyan Township, Ohio, in 1887, one of 15 kids. At age 19 she wedded P.C. Gatewood, with whom she had 11 kids. P.C. Gatewood was a violent abuser, about slaughtering his wife Emma on numerous events and leaving her with broken bones and broke teeth. At the point when her significant other got fierce, Emma regularly disappeared to the forested areas, where she discovered harmony and isolation.

At age of 53, Emma was finally granted the divorce she had been looking several years, liberating her from her significant other’s savagery. In 1955, Emma told her children that she was taking a walk. She had read an article about the Appalachian Trail and figured it would be “a nice lark.”

Imagining comfortable walks around the forested areas and comfortable lodges en route, she set out from Springer Mountain in Georgia (on the way to Mount Katahdin in Maine) in a couple of Keds tennis shoes, and conveyed with her a natively constructed denim backpack containing a military cover, an overcoat, and a plastic shower window ornament.

At age 67, with simply that small rigging, Emma Gatewood became the first woman to solo-hike all 2,168 miles of the Appalachian Trail, at first discovering the greater part of her food by scrounging (in spite of the fact that as her story was gotten by the news and spread, she got a lot of “trail enchantment” – food, housing, and supplies gave by individuals who lived along the path). Emma climbed the path again in 1960, at that point a third time in 1963 at age 75, making her the first person to thru-hike the trail three times, and the oldest female thru-hiker on record.. (To be noted that, she has additionally climbed more than 2,000 miles of the Oregon Trail.) Grandma Gatewood kicked the bucket in 1973 at 85 years old, however her incredible legacy will always remain and remembered.

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