How art inspired hiking

Though it may sound strange, or maybe even surprising, but art played an important role in the development of early American tourism and hiking. Specifically, it was a mid-nineteenth-century art movement known as the Hudson River School that celebrated the pastoral landscapes of our fledgling republic. The significance of the movement, whose artists were influenced by Romanticism and nationalism, was that it helped to usher in the acceptance and appreciation of the American landscape. It also encouraged Americans to visit the places depicted in their paintings. The founder of the movement, Thomas Cole, traveled to the Catskill Mountains for the first time in 1825. One of his first paintings, The Falls of the Kaaterskill, portrayed one of the highest waterfalls in the eastern United States, which in turn helped to make it one of America’s first tourist destinations.

Other notable artists from this genre include Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran, both of whom became famous for their paintings of the American West. In 1839, Cole painted A View of the Mountain Pass Called the Notch of the White Mountains (Crawford Notch), which by that point had already been established as America’s first hiking destination.

You can read about the crucial role the White Mountains of New Hampshire played in making hiking a national pastime in Ramble On: A History of Hiking.