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Founder of Berks hiking club to be inducted into the Appalachian Trail Hall of Fame

Members of the Blue Mountain Eagle Climbing Club had a bit more spring in their steps Tuesday during the club’s cleanup day at their home base in the 34-acre Rentschler Arboretum outside of Bernville.

They had just found out last week that their founder and arboretum’s benefactor and namesake, Dr. Harry F. Rentschler, will be inducted into the 13th class of the Appalachian Trail Hall of Fame on Sept.10 in Carlisle.

The Reading physician, who founded the Penn Township club in 1916, spearheaded with Appalachian Trail founder Benton MacKaye the construction of 102 miles of the Skyline Trail from the Lehigh to the Susquehanna rivers from 1926 through 1931. It was one of the first sections to be completed.

In 1921, MacKaye proposed the idea of a trail that would follow the Appalachian Mountain ridges to its present length of over 2,200 miles from Springer Mountain, Ga., to Mount Katahdin, Maine, passing through 14 states. The trail was completed in 1937.

Appalachian Trail founder Benton MacKaye speaks from a stoop in front of a cabin at Bake Oven Knob in Lehigh County. Dr. Harry F. Rentschler is next to him. (Photo courtesy of the Blue Mountain Eagle Hiking Club)
Appalachian Trail founder Benton MacKaye speaks from a stoop in front of a cabin at Bake Oven Knob in Lehigh County. Dr. Harry F. Rentschler is next to him. (Courtesy of Blue Mountain Eagle Climbing Club)

The trail traverses the Blue Mountain in northern Berks County.

So it was a natural fit for Rentschler and his group of hikers in the Blue Mountain Eagle Climbing Club, said club historian Barry Webb of Sinking Spring as he sat with club President Howard Reid in the headquarters bungalow, surrounded by memorabilia of the group’s activities and a commanding view of the Blue Mountain in the distance.

The club gets its name from the spring-and-fall hikes that Rentschler and around eight of his friends took up to the summit of the Blue Mountain, where eagles purportedly had nested, Webb said.

“What they wanted to do was to get out and exercise and to interact with nature,” he said. “You would think that those were late 20th century concepts, but they were thinking about that back in those days.”

Even though the idea has a late 20th century sensibility, the hiking gear had a definite formal feel.

“They would go off on these trips, and it’s interesting to see the photos: the knee-high, laced-leather boots, but they’re wearing a bow tie, white shirt and a coat to do this adventure,” Webb said.

The group grew to 100 who underwent an initiation of climbing to the top of the mountain, then rappelling down to the location of the nest site, he said.

Members of the Blue Mountain Eagle Climbing Club, now Hiking Club, pose near the Eagle's nest on the Blue Mountain, where the club took its name. (Photo courtesy of the Blue Mountain Eagle Hiking Club)
Members of the Blue Mountain Eagle Climbing Club pose near the Eagle’s nest on the Blue Mountain, where the club took its name. (Courtesy of Blue Mountain Eagle Climbing Club)

These skills also made them suitable to clear brush and lay out the trail.

Rentschler had kept a diary of the construction process, and the first entry dated Sunday, Nov. 21, 1926, relates how a group of 10, including former Reading Mayor William F. Shanaman and future congressman Daniel Hoch, left Reading at 9 a.m. and arrived by “machine” at a farm near the Berks-Lehigh line. They proceeded up the mountain for 2 miles on a deer path.

“The trail was started by placing a marker close to the Berks and Lehigh County marker,” Rentschler wrote. “Proceeded westward for ½ mile then turned southeast, cutting brush and tacking the trees for two miles to the high point known as Baer’s Ridge. From this ridge a most picturesque landscape scene covering the famous potato belt of Pennsylvania, Lynn Township in Lehigh County and Albany Township in Berks County.”

The Blue Mountain Eagle Climbing Club completed the 102-mile section in 1931.

With the original measuring wheel that was used to lay out the section of the Appalachian Trail from the Lehigh to the Susquehanna rivers in the late 1920s are from left Barry Webb, vice president and chairman of the archives committee for the Blue Mountain Eagle Hiking Club; David Bailey, past president of the club; and Howard Reid, president. The club was founded in 1916 by Dr. Harry F. Rentschler, who has recently been inducted in the Appalachian Trail Hall of Fame. (BILL UHRICH - READING EAGLE)
With the original measuring wheel that was used to lay out the section of the Appalachian Trail from the Lehigh to the Susquehanna rivers in the late 1920s are, from left, Barry Webb, vice president and chairman of the archives committee for the Blue Mountain Eagle Climbing Club; David Bailey, club past president; and Howard Reid, president. (BILL UHRICH – READING EAGLE)

Former club President David Bailey of Bernville demonstrated a unique piece of memorabilia: the measuring wheel that was used by Rentschler and his crew to lay out the 102 miles of trail. The wheel resembles the front of a bicycle with an odometer-like mechanism attached to the hub. In the club’s collection is a photo of a member using the wheel on an old dirt lane.

A member of the Blue Mountain Eagle Climbing Club employs the measuring wheel that was used to lay out the 102-mile section of the trail between the Lehigh and Susquehanna rivers. (Photo courtesy of the Blue Mountain Eagle Climbing Club)
A member of the Blue Mountain Eagle Climbing Club employs the measuring wheel that was used to lay out the 102-mile section of the trail between the Lehigh and Susquehanna rivers. (Courtesy of Blue Mountain Eagle Climbing Club)

Rentschler died Jan. 4, 1942, after he was stricken shoveling snow and is buried in Charles Evans Cemetery.

The club is open to all and now has over 200 members who maintain 64 miles of the trail.

Reid and Webb feel that Rentschler’s legacy goes beyond the Appalachian Trail.

Rentschler and his wife, Sadie, were childless, and they desired to see that what would become the arboretum would be available for children to learn about nature, Webb said.

His will provided an endowment for the arboretum’s upkeep to benefit the children of the community.

“We’ve run a number of programs for children,” Reid said. “We have an event coming up where we’re having 15 children from Reading come out and camp for three days on the property and they’ll have different activities.”

Rentschler had thought about how to continue this idea of education forward and how to protect the property and make it available to everyone, Reid said.

How do we continue his legacy?

“It’s one thing to go and create the trail,” he said. “It’s another thing to have it so that all ages, everyone has access to it.”

For more information on the club, go to www.bmecc.org.

 

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Source: Berkshire mont

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