Finding spirituality on the Appalachian Trail Indians claimed
peaks housed supernatural beings Can God be found on the
Appalachian Trail? Long before the Puritans of the Plymouth
Colony laid a lasting religious claim to the Appalachian peaks,
Eastern Woodland Indians claimed those heights as the first
residences of the supernatural beings of their religious
traditions. Then the Puritans arrived. Colonists seeking
religious independence from established churches and the
religious mainstream moved into mountain valleys at the margins
of the frontier. Certain sites along the trail route became
associated with the story of Exodus from the Bible. And in this
version, America was the new "Promised Land." The American
Romantics, including the Transcendentalist writers and the
Hudson River Valley painters, visited the Appalachian peaks
seeking both a deeper spiritual experience and subjects for
their work. Benton MacKaye, a Harvard-trained planner, proposed
the trail as a respite from the physical and mental impacts