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Sam Merrill Trail

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Sam Merrill Trail

The Sam Merrill Trail is a major hiking trail in the Las Flores Canyon of the San Gabriel Mountain Range north of Altadena, California, which leads to the top of Echo Mountain. It was built by Charles Warner and the Forest Conservation Club of Pasadena during the 1930s. After the deluge of 1938 most

of the trails that accessed the mountain sides around Echo Mountain and the Mount Lowe Railway had been all but washed away. Sam Merrill found it important to maintain public hiking access to the railway ruins and other portions of the treacherous foothill. During the 1940s he overhauled and maintained the trail. As a young man Merrill had lived with John Muir for a summer, which inspired a lifetime commitment to the outdoors and the Sierra Club. Merrill, who served as Clerk of the Superior Court of Los Angeles, was an active volunteer in the Sierra Club, leading outings for almost twenty years, serving on the Executive Committee of the Angeles Chapter from 1926 to 1935 and on the National Board of Directors of the Sierra Club from 1936 to 1937. When Sam Merrill died in 1948 the Sierra Club named the Echo Mountain Trail after him. The trail originated at the old railway's right of way...

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