Springer Mountain: Where the Appalachian Trail Begins

A bronze plaque on a granite boulder at the summit of Springer Mountain, in the Chattahoochee National Forest of north Georgia, marks the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. The plaque reads: Appalachian Trail, Georgia to Maine, a footpath for those who seek fellowship with the wilderness. The elevation is three thousand seven hundred and eighty-two feet. The distance to the northern terminus at Katahdin in Maine is two thousand one hundred and ninety-three miles.

Springer Mountain was not always the terminus. From nineteen thirty-seven, when the original trail was completed, until nineteen fifty-eight, the southern terminus was at Mount Oglethorpe, about twenty miles to the south. Encroaching chicken farms, roads, and development around Oglethorpe made the approach trail increasingly compromised, and the Appalachian Trail Conservancy relocated the terminus to Springer, which sits in protected national forest land. Most thru-hikers begin from the parking area at Amicalola Falls State Park eight miles away, walking an approach trail to reach the official terminus before starting north.

The Chattahoochee National Forest, which surrounds Springer Mountain and extends across much of north Georgia's Blue Ridge highlands, covers approximately seven hundred fifty thousand acres. It shares a boundary with the Oconee National Forest in the Georgia Piedmont, and together the two units form the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forests. The Georgia Appalachian highlands they protect include Brasstown Bald, the highest point in Georgia at four thousand seven hundred eighty-four feet, with a visitor center and observation deck that, on clear days, offers views into five states.

Every year, roughly three million people visit the Chattahoochee-Oconee forests. About three thousand of them set out to walk all the way to Maine. Fewer than one in four will make it.