Backpacker (magazine)
Backpacker is an American lifestyle magazine publication that features information on wilderness hiking and adventure. It has been published since 1973. Backpacker magazine is currently published by Outside and is based in Boulder, Colorado. Originally started in Bedford Hills, New York, the magazine moved to Emmaus, Pennsylvania in the late 1980s and then to Boulder in August 2007. History The first issue of Backpacker appeared in the spring of 1973. The first editor's note written by William Kemsley, the founding editor, explains that it took three years to put together the first issue of Backpacker, and that the founding editors worried that America in the early 1970s did not contain a backpacking community large enough to support a magazine. It also expresses Kemsley's goal to support the magazine primarily through subscriptions rather than advertising. The Winter/Spring 2007 issue of the journal Appalachia includes an essay by Kemsley titled "How the 1970s Backpacking Boom Burst Upon Us,". Kemsley discusses how he developed the idea to create a magazine about backpacking, and describes several critical moments supported the idea that an audience existed for such a magazine. Backpacker was owned first by Kemsley, who sold it to Ziff Davis in 1980, which