Nearly one hundred years ago, farmers Marion Buck Davis (1894–1986) of New Ipswich, New Hampshire, and Frank Robbins (1873–1946) of Rindge, New Hampshire were persuaded to create a hiking trail that would run across the ridgelines from Mount Watatic in Ashburnham, Massachusetts to North Pack Monadnock in Greenfield, New Hampshire. At the time most of the ridges were bare, with cattle grazing at the highest levels and a commercial blueberry farm on Temple Mountain.

The Wapack Trail, a name Marion created by combining the first syllables of the beginning and ending peaks, took only one year to be laid out. Marion, well-known as “a champion with an axe” having won the 1935 World’s Woodcutting Championship, and Frank, who is rarely seen without one in pictures of that time, cleared the twenty-one-mile route using only hand tools and working on Sundays.

The trail opened in 1923, the same year that work began on the Appalachian Trail. The November 4, 1922 Boston Evening Transcript’s prediction that the trail would “become a popular route” proved true. Credited with being the oldest intra-state hiking trail in New England, it was an immediate success.

Adding to its popularity was the Wapack Lodge, located in New Ipswich, which Marion and Frank built in 1924 at the midway point of the trail. Originally it housed twenty-five overnight guests, but a second floor was added, expanding the capacity. Marion made a living running the lodge, serving meals to hikers, skiers, and guests—sometimes as many as 100 at a time—for three decades until it closed in 1959. Many notable people used the trail, including Benton MacKaye (1879–1975), planner for the Appalachian Trail, who would bring boys up from the Bridgman School in Shirley, Massachusetts, where he was teaching, to work on the trail.

Marion, Frank, and several friends were the early caretakers of the Wapack Trail. Although popular in its early days, the trail fell into disrepair after World War II. In 1980, the Friends of the Wapack Trail was formed to maintain and permanently protect the Trail.

In 1985 the Marion Davis Trail, a 2.7 mile, highly popular, moderate route through Miller State Park in Peterborough, New Hampshire, was dedicated, a fitting tribute honoring the woman who worked tirelessly to create, maintain, and promote the Wapack Trail.