In April 1957, Emma Gatewood quietly prepared for another thru-hike. She sewed a new denim bag, babysat grandchildren who misbehaved, bought a Timex watch, and visited friends and family. After collecting her false teeth from Dr. Allison and a screw for her glasses from Dr. Thomas, she departed for Mount Oglethorpe. Nineteen months after completing her first hike, and two weeks before Mother’s Day, Emma began her second thru-hike.

A May article by Murray T. Pringle in American Mercury noted that Americans had become dependent on automobiles. On September 7, Emma sent a postcard to her daughter Lucy from Caratunk, Maine, describing a reception attended by reporters and forest wardens. On September 16, an Associated Press dispatch reported she was about to summit Mount Katahdin. She became the first person to walk the trail twice, though she climbed the final stretch nearly blind after her glasses fogged up.

Emma shared stories from the journey: walking within six feet of a rattlesnake in Georgia, receiving food from a helpful man with a “peg leg,” and seeing her first bear, which she scared off by shouting. Near Roanoke, an unknown creature bit her leg, causing severe swelling. She received penicillin from a doctor without revealing her identity. She spent a day hiking near Dorothy Laker, who would become the second woman to thru-hike alone, but the two never spoke. She encountered a Boy Scout leader sitting naked outside a shelter, and she slept in varied locations, from comfortable homes to a pasteboard box to an abandoned church. She witnessed an AWOL soldier surrendering to state police, rode in a parade on a fire engine, and attended welcoming parties. While resting on a moss-covered log, she spoke to a red fox carrying prey in its mouth, startling it away.

Unlike her first hike, she sent postcards home. Her son Nelson and his family intercepted her in Pennsylvania for dinner and a morning hike. She told reporters she found the woods restful and noted that her earlier criticism had prompted trail improvements. After finishing, she was celebrated in Millinocket, where the chamber of commerce presented her with a blue-and-gray suit. She spoke at the high school and delivered cookies to hospital patients. Back home, a football game halftime was declared “Grandma Gatewood Night.” She told Gallipolis Rotarians she would like to visit the South Pole.

Emma continued hiking other trails, including the Baker Trail in Pennsylvania. She spent three weeks at a Girl Scout camp and walked 43 miles to a 4-H camp. In 1958, she climbed six Adirondack peaks and expressed interest in joining the Forty-Sixers club. She declined an older man’s request to join her on a hike, concerned that people would gossip. She wrote a poem titled “The Reward of Nature.”

In August 1959, five thousand people gathered in Portland, Oregon, to welcome 71-year-old Emma Gatewood at the conclusion of her 2,000-mile walk following the route of the old Oregon Trail. After 95 days walking on scalding asphalt at roughly three miles a day while carrying a blue umbrella to shield her from the sun, she appeared exhausted. Newspapers had speculated she would quit after rumors spread that she had accepted a ride. In Vale, Oregon, she visited the grave of John D. Henderson, a pioneer who died on the trail in 1852.

Emma was inspired to walk the trail after reading about the Oregon Centennial Exposition and thinking of the pioneer women who walked behind wagons. She left Independence, Missouri, on May 4, two weeks after former President Harry Truman saw off a ceremonial wagon train. She passed that wagon train in Idaho and slept in Wyoming sagebrush for 14 nights.

In a July 27 letter to her daughter Lucy, Emma described being celebrated at a rodeo attended by 10,000 people and promised VIP treatment at the Portland Centennial. As she neared Portland, the constant crowds and media attention frustrated her. She threw stones at one newsman and struck photographer Robert Hall on the forehead with her umbrella, drawing blood. Overcome with remorse when she saw the wound, she cried and apologized. Hall forgave her.

On August 7, declared “Grandma Gatewood Day” in Portland, she arrived and wept after crossing the finish-line ribbon. Captain John Pittenger briefly took her away in a police car to let her compose herself. She rode in a motorcade and joked with the mayor about being treated like royalty. She received a new dress, lunched with the mayor and police chief, and accepted numerous gifts, including the key to the city. Her old clothes and umbrella were sent to a museum. She took a helicopter ride and toured Oregon as a guest of various organizations. The United Press listed her hike as the second-biggest Oregon news story of 1959.

In November, she returned to Hollywood to appear on Groucho Marx’s quiz show You Bet Your Life alongside author Max Shulman. During a discussion about gender roles, she stated that she did not think a wife should run the household. When Groucho asked what she did for excitement, she revealed she had walked the 2,000-mile Oregon Trail, stunning the audience. She explained she did it because her family was grown, and she simply wanted to do something. Back home, she sent seeds to Portland Mayor Terry Schrunk and wrote that she would likely remain in Ohio, though she continued to travel.

In February 1960, a reporter found 72-year-old Emma Gatewood at a Chillicothe, Ohio, bus station. She joked that if her bus did not arrive soon, she would walk to Dayton. She explained she was working to establish the Buckeye Trail through Ohio and needed to reach Cincinnati, hoping to visit her son Nelson first. Later that month, she wrote to Lucy from the Delta Queen steamboat en route to Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

On April 28, Emma began another attempt at an Appalachian Trail hike from its southern terminus but abandoned it after 75 miles in North Carolina due to a massive blowdown. She continued hiking other trails, appearing on the Horseshoe Trail in Pennsylvania in June, at Wind Gap later that month, and at her daughter Lucy’s home in White Plains, New York, soon after. A local caller reported she was hiking Mount Greylock in Massachusetts, and she took a paid airplane ride to view the trail from above.

On August 7, 1960, she completed Vermont’s Long Trail and crossed into Canada. In a letter home, she described the challenging journey, an encounter with a bear and cub on Bread Loaf Mountain, and a failed attempt to cook a porcupine after the taste of its roasted liver made her abandon the meal entirely.

In 1960, British paratroopers Patrick Maloney and Mervyn Evans walked across the United States, as did vegetarian Dr. Barbara Moore. Emma expressed interest in meeting the paratroopers but not Moore. By 1963, a 50-mile walking craze swept the nation after President John F. Kennedy challenged modern Marines to meet a 1908 fitness standard set by Theodore Roosevelt.

In May 1963, hiker Paris Whitehead met Emma in Shenandoah National Park and asked which part of the trail she liked best. She quipped that going downhill was her favorite. In summer 1964, conservationist Merrill C. Gilfillan waited four days for Emma at Pinkham Notch Hut in New Hampshire, growing alarmed as bad weather set in. When she finally arrived, he noted the contrast between her minimal gear and the well-equipped younger hikers who admired her. Despite injuries from a fall and a dog bite, Emma remained cheerful, telling Gilfillan that after the hard life she had lived, the trail was not so bad.

On September 17, 1964, at age 77, Emma completed her third Appalachian Trail hike in sections over several years, becoming the first person to walk the entire trail three times. She sold her house and bought a trailer court in Cheshire, Ohio, where she performed demanding manual labor. A 1967 diary entry detailed a day of intense physical work maintaining the property.

Emma continued attending National Campers and Hikers Association events and began blazing a 30-mile hiking trail in Gallia County, intended to connect to the Buckeye Trail. Ohio Governor James Rhodes presented her with the State Conservation Award.

In 1968, Emma’s estranged husband, P.C. Gatewood, fell ill. In his final days, he asked to see Emma, but she refused to take those steps. She eventually walked more than 14,000 miles in her lifetime.

Emma Gatewood’s favorite place was Old Man’s Cave in Hocking Hills, Ohio, a sandstone gorge named for recluse Richard Rowe, who lived there in the early 1800s. Starting in 1967, she led an annual six-mile winter hike through the area. In 1972, at age 84, she struggled with leg pain and had to be carried over rough spots.

The 1973 winter hike was held in her honor. She served as hostess, greeting over 2,500 hikers, and received the Governor’s Community Action Award. That spring, she took a final bus trip across 48 states and three Canadian provinces, visiting friends and family. She stopped in Falls Church, Virginia, to visit Ed Garvey, author of Appalachian Hiker, and described a beautiful night watching stars on a mountain.

Returning home in late May, she felt ill, which she blamed on the bus’s air conditioning. She planted a garden and continued her daily activities until she called her son Nelson to say something was wrong. An ambulance took her to the hospital, where she fell into a coma. On the morning of June 4, 1973, she briefly roused, opened her eyes, and hummed a few bars of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” before dying.

Her obituaries ran nationwide, and the Ohio Senate passed a resolution in her memory. She was buried in Gallia County under a simple marker reading “EMMA R. GATEWOOD / GRANDMA.”

On June 7, 2012, Lucy Gatewood Seeds, 84, sat in a lodge in Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania, waiting for her family to gather for dinner. A wet thru-hiker named Chris Odom, who went by the trail name “Stats,” entered the lodge. Lucy introduced herself as Grandma Gatewood’s daughter. Stats explained that reading about Emma 22 years earlier had sparked his desire to hike the trail. Another hiker, Ken “Buckeye” Bordwell, introduced himself and said his father had read stories about Emma aloud at home, planting the seed for his own eventual thru-hike. Gene Espy, the second thru-hiker, was also present and expressed admiration for Emma’s accomplishments.

Trail scholars Larry Luxenberg, Robert Croyle, and Laurie Potteiger discuss Emma’s enormous impact on popularizing and preserving the Appalachian Trail. Montgomery argues that the significant spike in thru-hikers began before Ed Garvey’s influential book was published, suggesting Emma was a primary catalyst. Online trail journals contain hundreds of entries crediting her as an inspiration.

Lucy is in Boiling Springs for Emma’s induction into the Appalachian Trail Hall of Fame. She has worked to protect her mother’s legacy, including writing to author Bill Bryson to correct his unflattering description of Emma as eccentric and frequently lost. Lucy recalls Emma’s prediction that monuments would be erected to her, which has proven true. The Hall of Fame includes a bust and display case telling her story. She pioneered three groups of hikers: seniors, women, and ultralight minimalists. Only eight women and fifty-five men have completed three two-thousand-mile hikes, placing Emma in elite company.

At the ceremony, Larry Luxenberg calls Emma a hiker for the ages. Lucy delivers her acceptance speech, beginning by noting that people call her Grandma Gatewood, but she calls her mamma.

The author reflects on Emma’s motivations for hiking. He considers various explanations but ultimately concludes that her escape from an abusive past was a significant factor. Her most honest answer to why she hiked was that she did it because she wanted to.

In January 2013, the author drove Emma’s daughter, Louise Gatewood LaMott, from Columbus to Hocking Hills State Park for the 48th annual winter hike. They arrived before dawn to find thousands of people—4,305 in total—gathering for the event. The crowd was unprecedented, with cars packed on the grass and license plates from across the country.

At the trailhead stood a large boulder with a metal plaque dedicating the six-mile route as the “Grandma Gatewood Memorial Trail.” Montgomery notes this trail is now part of the Buckeye Trail, the North Country Trail, and the American Discovery Trail, fulfilling Emma’s prediction about monuments.

Despite the cold and icy conditions, 86-year-old Louise insisted on hiking and brought her mother’s walking stick. Unlike the hikers in expensive winter gear, Louise wore simple low-top Nike sneakers and insisted she did not need gloves. Montgomery helped her navigate the stone steps and frozen bridges into the gorge near Old Man’s Cave. He reflected that the thousands of attendees came not just to hike but to connect with Emma’s memory and experience what she experienced.

Louise completed the trail successfully. As they drove back to Columbus, they agreed to return the following year.