St. John’sTrail Bandit: Man Behind the Maps
Somewhere along our travels in the Virgin Island we heard about the Trail Bandit. His handy work, a self published map of the island’s trails, was to be found in some of the local shops. It was an intriguing title and a great map, so I shot him an email with a few questions and this is what he had to say:
“I am Bob Garrison from Henniker, NH… I have been going to St. John since 1964 and really like the place. In hiking around, I discovered a lot of old roads, trails, and ruins that were not on the map that the Park Service handed out. Also, their map really was pretty bad.”
(and this is were I would have given up, but Bob took things a step further)
“I purchased a GPS and started making a map for my own use and finally… I approached the Park service and offered to put a better map together for them, but they were basically not interested”
(again, Bob apparently has quite a bit more tenacity than I would…)
“I went ahead and published a map on my own. The rules I had were that it had to be accurate, show all the trails I knew about, and be waterproof so it would stand up to a vacation or two in the tropics.”
(wow! Not only is he persistent, but practical too!)
“The Park Service has been against my efforts in general. National parks have a set of rules and guidelines about how to go about clearing an old trail or road. In short, you need to get permission. This is reasonable, however, for years, the Park Staff on St. John either didn’t respond to requests, or had a list of all the things that “May be required” to get approval to clear a trail. In trying to work through the list of “May be Requireds” I found that the Park staff eventually just didn’t answer. They liked things the way they were and wanted no changes.”
“The name Trail Bandit came from an article in the AMC monthly magazine…They were complaining about people reopening old abandoned trails, without permission. They called them “Trail Bandits.”
(hmm, so it seems Bob is a bit of a rebel at heart)
“The biggest challenge to actually making the map was that I had never made a map before… The second edition of the map, which is the current version, came out a lot better ”
(and of course I had to ask …)
“My favorite trail on St. John is the Tektite Trail and the spur out to Cabritte Horn. I may be biased because I, with help from friends, located the old road out there and worked a lot of hours to clear it. Many others have been out there and agree that it is a beautiful place.”
So that’s the gist of the man behind the map, if you’re interested in reading the full interview you can check it out on our “Interviews” page.
