78: Grandma Gatewood Takes One Hell of a Walk (Part 1)

An Old Timey Podcast

True Crime, History, Comedy

4.9 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2025

⏱️ 90 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Emma Gatewood set off on the Appalachian Trail, she didn’t look like much of a hiker. She was 67 years old. She wore a pair of Keds. She had no training. But she figured that wouldn’t matter. An article in National Geographic magazine claimed that anyone in “normal good health” could hike the 2,169-mile trail. The article was misleading, but Emma persevered. In 1955, “Grandma Gatewood” became the first woman to complete a solo hike of the Appalachian Trail.

In this episode, we learn what Emma overcame, including domestic violence and sexual abuse, before she set foot on the trail.

Remember, kids, history hoes always cite their sources! For this episode, Norm pulled from:

Brown, Andrew. “Skyline Trail from Maine to Georgia.” National Geographic, August 1949.
Huston, Peter, dir. Trail Magic: The Grandma Gatewood Story. 2015. https://vimeo.com/ondemand/237744.
Montgomery, Ben. Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail. Chicago Review Press, 2016.
New York Times. “Overlooked No More: Emma Gatewood, First Woman to Conquer the Appalachian Trail Alone.” October 7, 2021. https://archive.is/kp2au.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hear ye, hear ye. You are listening to an old-timey podcast. I'm Norman Caruso. And I'm
0:07.5	Kristen Caruso. And in this series, I'll be talking about Grandma Gatewood.
0:12.6	Who the hell is that? She sounds lovely. I'll give you a clue. Uh-huh. She's a grandma.
0:18.6	And her last name's Gatewood.
0:28.7	That is not a clue about anything. Does she have Wothers in her sweater pocket, along with a couple crumpled, used Kleenexes?
0:36.4	My research says that's unclear. But she's an incredible woman with an incredible story, and I'm going to tell you all about it, Kristen.
0:38.7	Now, Norm, I can tell you are just very excited, maybe too excited to tell us about this weird old lady. I'm sorry, is she a hero?
0:45.2	And I'm being rude. She was an incredible woman. Okay. My apologies to the incredible woman,
0:51.1	but I've got something to say. Oh, yeah?
0:54.5	Yeah, this is, Norm, don't, listen, the ADHD meds have come together in a beautiful
0:59.3	way, and I had a realization, an epiphany today.
1:02.7	I was like, oh, m.g, the timing is incredible when this episode drops.
1:08.5	Yeah.
1:09.4	On Wednesday, October, what's it going to be?
1:12.3	29th.
1:12.8	29th, I knew it.
1:14.7	Let me tell you, folks, you're listening on that very day and you are not a member of our Patreon.
1:21.0	Oh, ho, ho, ho, do you have work to do?
1:23.2	Get on over to patreon.com slash old-timey podcast because on that very day at 7 p.m. Central
1:31.1	Standard Time, we are having trivia. That's right. Trivia. Technically, we're in daylight time,
1:37.6	so it would be Central Daylight Time, CDT. Oh, my God. Okay. We know about time zones. We learned it from you, Dad.
1:43.3	That's right. Anyway, so here's the deal. Our trivia is very fun. It is cutthroat, okay? And it's cutthroat for a reason because there's so much on the line. What's the top prize? Is it a million dollars? No, who gives a shit about that? Is it a brand new car? No, it's stickers. The thing we want most in the world,
	...

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