Trail Blazers : Stories about early Arizona Trail pioneers.
If you have stories to share, please email them (along with photos) to ata@aztrail.org. Help us preserve stories and memories of the folks who helped blaze the path the rest of us now follow.
by John Nelson, May 2020 The other day was Dale’s birthday. I can’t believe he’d be seventy now. He’ll always be about thirty for us. This morning we listened to Irish music and had sourdough pancakes in his honor. Lisa and I met Dale in about 1978 when we lived next to each other in the two second-story apartments above an […]
Read moreTraveling parts of the Arizona Trail with Dale Remembered by LISA SCHNEBLY-HEIDINGER Dale Shewalter’s dream of the Arizona Trail showed up in an Arizona Daily Star article written by my friend Doug Kreutz in January of 1989. I can still picture where I was, at my desk in the back of the KGUN-TV newsroom in Tucson when I called to […]
Read moreDave Hicks, Arizona Trail Association Executive Director from 2006 to 2012, submitted these names as folks he recognized as providing critical help to the completion of the Trail. There are many more, he says, and all part of his adventure. Zay Hartigan Zay has been a leading trail builder, caretaker and advocate in southern Arizona area since the early 2000’s. […]
Read moreIt was 1989 when Arizona Highways published an article about the Arizona Trail. There was an amazing photo of the Crest Trail that just called my name! I was about to hang up my mule’s bridle after seven years of organizing the “Frontier Shady Ladies Bumblebee to Williams All-Woman Charity Trail Ride.” Each year, during the last week of August […]
Read moreby Eric Smith I first heard about the Arizona Trail in 1987. In 1988, while attending a volunteer conference at Boyce Thompson Southwestern Arboretum, Dale Shewalter gave an enlightening presentation on the Arizona Trail. Progress was already underway on the four national forests. I was “hooked” from the moment I learned of the project. In mid-1990, I called Dale to […]
Read moreCreation of the Arizona Trail on the Tusayan Ranger District, Kaibab National Forest The Kaibab National Forest played an important role in the initial development of the Arizona Trail. Dennis Lund, the Kaibab National Forest’s Recreation Staff Officer, hired Dale Shewalter, the trail’s visionary and a local Flagstaff school teacher to start the coordination between the different agencies and entities […]
Read moreBy Merle Parmer Answers to “10 Questions” 1. I have been involved with the Arizona Trail since February 1997, actively until January 2007, when I started having a sequence of bad luck with health problems. Since the beginning of 2007, I have been semi-retired as I have been physically unable to do the trail work. I have done a few […]
Read moreTom Coulson 2017 I did my first “backpacking trip” at age 16 with my Dad and Brother. We always loved the great outdoors so Dad got each of us a “Camp Trails” backpack and we started going. Now at age 65 and several packs later, I still love it. The Arizona Trail had become an important part of my life because it […]
Read moreRemembered by Phyllis Ralley, Photo by Larry Snead Dale Shewalter once told me a story about how he was backpacking in Ponderosa pine country and hiked past a spot, under a beautiful Ponderosa, that was a perfect place to place his tent. It was still a bit early so he decided to keep hiking to another spot. That night there […]
Read moreby Tom Coulson Dale was very active with the Arizona Trail in the early days when he was healthy. I only got to actually build trail with him one time. It was up near the Northern Terminus in the year 2002. Work crews were finishing up the final tread work a short distance south of the terminus and I was […]
Read more
