America's longest hiking trail runs through cities you'd never expect

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy reports the most-hiked trail in America drew 16.9 million visitors in 2025. The North Country National Scenic Trail gets a fraction of that, and at nearly 4,800 miles, it’s more than twice as long. Fewer people have completed the entire route than have summited Everest.

It doesn’t hug a single mountain range with a catchy name. It doesn’t show up in the gear ads. The North Country Trail covers the prairie grasslands of North Dakota, the wild lakeshore cliffs of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the Adirondack backcountry, the old canal paths of Ohio. No other trail comes close to matching this cross-section of northern America. It runs right through the middle of cities most people wouldn’t associate with hiking at all.

What Makes This Trail Different

The North Country National Scenic Trail is the longest in the National Trails System, stretching 4,800 miles across eight states: Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota. It traverses forests and farmlands, remote terrain, and communities. It runs nearly longer than the Appalachian and Pacific Crest National Scenic Trails combined.

Designated as a National Scenic Trail in 1980, the North Country Trail begins in Middlebury, Vermont and ends at Lake Sakakawea State Park in North Dakota. When reroutes are complete, it will connect the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail in the West to the Long Trail and Appalachian National Scenic Trail in the East, creating the backbone of a coast-to-coast walking corridor across the northern United States.

The trail was recognized as an official unit of the National Park Service in 2023, managed in partnership with federal, state, and local agencies. For decades it existed in an institutional gray zone, congressionally designated but not fully integrated into the National Park System. That changed a few years ago, giving the trail new visibility, resources, and a clearer identity within the broader national parks framework.

The trail spans approximately 4,800 miles across eight states, with roughly two-thirds designated as dedicated off-road path and the remaining portion consisting of road walking or temporary routes. Volunteers close road-walking gaps every year through new construction. The trail is still being built.

Eight States, One Blue Blaze

The North Country National Scenic Trail is frequently marked by bright blue rectangles called blazes, roughly the size of a U.S. dollar bill turned vertically. Follow the blue, and you’re on the trail. That consistency is one of the few constants across an otherwise wildly varied route.

The western end starts in the wide-open spaces of North Dakota. The trail spends more than 460 miles in North Dakota, beginning at Lake Sakakawea State Park in Mercer County, following footpaths in the state park and then a series of roads until reaching the shore of Lake Audubon and the Audubon National Wildlife Refuge. For long stretches here, the trail follows the McClusky Canal through some of the most sparsely populated terrain in the lower 48. Treeless horizons, prairie grasses, a sky that seems wider than it has any right to be make this section genuinely unlike any other hiking in the country.

Minnesota brings the trail into the heartland of its volunteer network. Approximately 3,000 miles of the North Country Trail sit on public lands. In Minnesota, the trail passes through Itasca State Park, where the Mississippi River begins as a trickle narrow enough to step across, and threads through the Chippewa National Forest into the Iron Range towns of the north.

Wisconsin’s segment is shorter in distance. The trail clips the northwest corner of the state for 220 miles, passing through Douglas, Bayfield, Ashland, and Iron counties. The original 60-mile Northern Country Trail in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest lent its name to the 4,800-mile National Scenic Trail when the idea of the multi-state trail was first envisioned. The whole thing started here, in a small corner of northern Wisconsin.

Michigan is where the trail truly takes over. The Michigan segment spans a total length of 1,178 miles, making it the longest state portion of the trail as of 2024. It crosses both peninsulas. The trail walks through Marquette for a considerable distance, then reaches Laughing Whitefish Falls State Park, hikes about 23 miles through Hiawatha National Forest, and then follows the shore of Lake Superior for more than 30 miles through Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. That stretch along Pictured Rocks (the sandstone cliffs rising from blue-green water, the hidden sea caves, the waterfalls that drop directly to the beach) is widely considered one of the most spectacular sections of any trail in the country.

Ohio is where the trail surprises people who aren’t expecting it. The trail proceeds through extensive urban areas in Dayton, the biggest city on the North Country Trail, then walks through Yellow Springs and Xenia, joining the paved Little Miami Scenic Trail for several dozen miles into the northeastern suburbs of the Cincinnati metro area. Hikers walk along rail trails and historic canal routes, through sprawling state and county parks, socializing or restocking supplies in more populated areas like Dayton and Xenia.

Pennsylvania brings the trail through the Allegheny National Forest, where the terrain turns more rugged: rock formations, deep hemlock valleys, the headwaters of several major rivers. New York follows with perhaps the greatest concentration of landscapes. After an extended distance on rural roads to Herkimer County, the trail enters Adirondack Park, spending about the next 158 miles largely via wilderness footpaths in the western districts of the park and then remote forest roads in the eastern districts. The trail eventually reaches the shore of Lake Champlain and walks through Crown Point State Historic Park before crossing into Vermont and its final connection with the Appalachian Trail.

The Cities Along the Way

The North Country Trail walks through cities and towns rather than around them. Dozens of popular trailheads sit within easy reach of major metropolitan areas across all eight states.

The North Country Trail Association, in collaboration with local volunteer Chapters and municipalities, can designate a community as a Trail Town. An official Trail Town not only hosts the North Country Trail, but provides resources and services to support trail users, promotes the trail to its citizens, and embraces the trail as a resource to be protected and celebrated. There are currently 34 officially designated Trail Towns spread across the eight states, ranging from small Michigan towns like Kalkaska and Fife Lake to larger urban centers.

Popular wilderness areas for section and day hiking along the trail include the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania, Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio, and Manistee National Forest in Michigan. The Trail Town program means that the path between those wild sections is supported, not abandoned. Hikers resupplying in Marquette or Battle Creek or Lowell aren’t improvising. They’re using a system designed specifically for them.

For casual hikers or those new to long-distance trails, this urban accessibility is the trail’s most underrated feature. You don’t need a month of vacation and a gear sponsor. A weekend in Dayton, a long afternoon in Buffalo’s Allegheny foothills, a day trip through Cuyahoga Valley. The trail meets people wherever they are.

The People Who’ve Walked All of It

Only a handful of people have thru-hiked the entire 4,800-mile trail. A full thru-hike usually takes over a year for most hikers, though fast hikers tackling upward of 20 miles per day with few rest days can complete the trail in closer to seven to nine months.

In 2021, Ryan “Constantine” Bunting and his partner Dana “Magpie” Burkett made history when they set the fastest known time for hiking the North Country Trail, walking 4,833.4 miles in 186 days, 9 hours, 38 minutes, and 21 seconds. At the same instant, Bunting, 27, became the youngest known person to have hiked all 11 National Scenic Trails, racking up more than 18,500 miles since completing his first thru-hike on the Appalachian Trail in 2016.

Most people who engage with the trail do it in sections, sometimes over years. The trail’s “Hike 100” challenge invites participants to spend 100 miles on the trail between January 1 and December 31 (hiking, walking, snowshoeing, or running) and earn a new patch every year. Thousands of people participate annually, logging miles in their home states without ever attempting anything close to a full thru-hike. For most participants, a weekend section near home is the whole point, and the trail is designed to make that just as rewarding as going end to end.

What the North Country Trail Actually Is

People who’ve done serious stretches of the Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Crest Trail sometimes describe the North Country Trail as the one that doesn’t get the credit it deserves. That’s partly about marketing, partly about the trail’s own geography. It doesn’t have a single dramatic feature the way the PCT has the High Sierra, or the AT has Katahdin. It has breadth instead: prairie to Great Lakes to Rust Belt canal paths to Adirondack wilderness, all connected by a blue blaze painted on a tree.

March 5th marks the anniversary of Congress declaring the North Country Trail a National Scenic Trail. It is the longest National Scenic Trail in America, having grown to 4,800 miles across eight states, nearly longer than the Appalachian and Pacific Crest National Scenic Trails combined. At ground level, that distance moves through American history in a way that numbers don’t quite capture: the old canal routes in Ohio, the copper mining ghost towns in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the fur-trading posts of the upper Midwest, the Iron Range, the Erie Canal towpath. You cover a lot of American story in 4,800 miles.

The trail is still being finished. Gaps close every year as volunteers reroute road walks onto new off-road paths. It’s one of the few national landmarks genuinely shaped by the people who use it: more than 100 volunteers in a single chapter, in a single year, maintaining a single 100-mile stretch. Multiply that across 39 chapters and eight states, and you start to understand what holds this thing together.

Where the Trail Finds You

The North Country National Scenic Trail doesn’t ask much of you upfront. A weekend in the Pictured Rocks corridor, an afternoon on the Erie Canal towpath, a day hike into the Adirondacks from a trailhead an hour from Albany. Any of those count. The scale of the full route is staggering, but the entry point is as low as it gets.

A trail this long absorbs whatever you bring to it. Section hikers clock their miles in patches across years. Thru-hikers spend close to a year becoming intimately familiar with eight states’ worth of weather and terrain. Day hikers show up near a city they already know and find a stretch of forest they didn’t expect. None of those is the wrong way to use it. The North Country Trail is long enough to find you wherever you are.

Disclaimer: This information is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment and is for information only. Always seek the advice of your physician or another qualified health provider with any questions about your medical condition and/or current medication. Do not disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking advice or treatment because of something you have read here.

AI Disclaimer: This article was created with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by a human editor.

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