Raymond H. Torrey

Born in Georgetown, Massachusetts, where his father was a sea captain, he began a career in journalism in newspapers in the Berkshires first, but soon moved to New York City.

In the early 1920s Torrey developed a weekly outdoor column for the Post, called the Long Brown Path which was named for a line in Walt Whitman's "Song of the Open Road".

Welch suggested that Torrey use his influential column to help organize New York metropolitan area hiking clubs into a volunteer trail-building confederation; this led to the creation of the Palisades Interstate Park Trail Conference, a precursor of the NY/NJTC.

He also used the column as a "bully pulpit", railing against litter, championing environmental causes, giving notice of upcoming conservation bills in New York and New Jersey, and organizing letter-writing campaigns in support of reforestation measures and proposals for the creation of new parks.

Working with volunteers organized by J. Ashton Allis of the Trail Conference, Torrey helped blaze the first 6 miles (10 km) of the AT running from the Ramapo River to Fingerboard Mountain.

On November 18 of that year, he worked with the Tramp and Trail Club on what he dubbed a "Speed Special", clearing and blazing a 20-mile (32 km) section through Sterling Forest, New York.

By 1929, with the help of New Jersey state park officials, a 43-mile (69 km) section from the Delaware River to High Point along the Kittatinny Ridge was completed.