if you like this article, click the Blip chiclet!
by JHY
These patches have been offered more recently by the North Country Trail Association. The patch above was introduced in 2000. It, and the state patches below first show up in the October 2000 North Star. That year, our annual conference was combined with the Superior Hiking Trail, in May, as they embraced the Arrowhead Reroute. It would make sense that the patches would have been available for the conference, but they don't appear in the July North Star, so I'm not sure. And although I was at that conference, I don't remember. This uses the National Park Service emblem for the NCT. If you compare the compass star in this patch to the ones in the earlier patches you will see that it is yellow and white, instead of yellow and black. This reflects the change that the NPS made officially, to make the star show up better on signage.
 current North Country Trail state patches |
Introduced at the same time were these small state patches. They are just 2 inches on the diagonal. It is significant that the Arrowhead route now is shown on the one for Minnesota.
 2000- 2005 North Country Trail volunteer patches |
In 2001, this series of patches was begun. They could be purchased by chapters to be awarded to volunteers. You can see that there were four specific designs for Hike Leaders, Volunteer Organizers, Mappers (those who provided input for the then new NCTA maps), and Trail Crew for actual trail work. Any volunteer could purchase, or be given, the volunteer year patches. These were designed by Bob Papp, Executive Director at that time, and quite an all-purpose-person.
 patch awarded for recruiting members |
I am not sure if this patch is still available or not. This is a patch which was awarded for a particular service to the NCTA. If a person had recruited 10 other new members, this patch was given to the recruiter. Incidentally, there was also an award for recruiting 50 members. This was a denim jacket. Bob Tait received one, but I think that before anyone else reached this level things had changed and no one remembered that award.
There is an existing patch for End-to-Enders. These were made in 1995, and the first ones presented to Ed Talone and Chet Fromm at the 1995 conference at Watson Homestead, New York. These went missing for quite a few years, but I understand from Andrea Ketchmark, the relatively new Director of Trail Development, that they have been found. I told her to save me one!
Although some chapters have created patches, and there were some made for annual conferences, to my knowledge, between yesterday and today's posts, these are all the patches which have been generally issued by the NCTA. If anyone has information which can add to this, it would be greatly appreciated if you would contact me.
See NCT Memorabilia - Part 2 - Early Patches
See North Country Trail Association to buy current patches at the Trail Shop
Contact me at jhy@t-one.net
No comments:
Post a Comment