Founder profile: Joe Dodge, hutmaster extraordinairre

Following are three informative tributes to Joe Dodge from the AMC Archives, Dartmouth College, and the Boston Globe (see editors note below).  While Joe was not technically the founder, he was the dynamo that expanded, organized, and shaped the huts into a system, and who took the huts to a whole new levels of operational effectiveness and hospitality.  For more on Joe, see William Lowell Putnam’s affectionate, informal biography Joe Dodge: “One New Hampshire Institution”

From the AMC Archives:

Joe Dodge (1898-1973), legendary White Mountain figure and “father of the AMC hut system”, played a key role in the expansion of the Appalachian Mountain Club’s system of back country huts on the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire. He acted as Huts Manager for AMC between 1928 and 1959. A native of Manchester-by-the Sea, Massachusetts, Dodge acquired a love for the White Mountains during family visits as a youth in 1909 and 1916.

Dodge dropped out of high school at the age of 17 in order to volunteer for service in the Navy. He was employed installing and repairing radio equipment for the U.S. Naval Submarine Service during World War I. In 1922, he became Hut Master of Pinkham Camp under AMC Hut Manager Milton Emery “Red Mac” MacGregor (1884-1976). In 1928 he replaced “Red Mac” MacGregor as AMC Huts Manager, a position he held for the next 31 years.

During the next decade, Dodge presided over major improvements and expansion of the hut system, culminating in the construction of Zealand Falls Hut, Greenleaf Hut, and Galehead Hut between 1929 and 1932, thus creating a chain of rustic, backcountry accommodations for hikers travelling along the trails between Franconia Notch and Carter Notch in the White Mountain National Forest. Through his knowledge of construction techniques and skill at managing both costs and people, the huts were completed months ahead of schedule at 40 percent under cost. Highly charismatic, with a gift for getting the best out of people, Dodge mentored and earned the enduring loyalty of generations of AMC ‘hutmen’.

An inveterate storyteller, with a homespun and colorful personality, Dodge became the subject of feature length articles in numerous publications, which made his name synonymous with the AMC. He is reputed to have known over 2000 persons by name and met at least 100,000 others. During his long tenure as Huts Manager, Dodge supervised over 100 rescue operations in the White Mountains, one of which became the subject of a movie newsreel.

Among his non-AMC accomplishments, he was the co-founder, with Robert Monahan, of the Mount Washington Observatory on the summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire. He was serving as treasurer and managing director of the Observatory at the time of his death. He also helped organize and judge the American Inferno, a ski race from the summit of Mount Washington to Pinkham Notch (named for a similar race held in Murren, Switzerland). In addition to his outdoor activities, Dodge served as a life Trustee of Memorial Hospital, North Conway, New Hampshire, Conway selectman, and vestryman of Christ Church. Following his retirement in 1959, he became weather forecaster for TV station WMTW and broadcast his reports from the summit of Mount Washington. In 1955, Dodge was awarded an honorary degree of Master of Arts by Dartmouth College.

Editors note: The piece above was graciously provided by Becky Fullerton, Archivist of AMC Library.  It was developed by archivists for the finding guide for AMC’s Joe Dodge archival holdings, and is the best brief profile I have seen. (Note: the Dodge family has custody of the main body of Joe’s manuscripts).  The citation read by Dr. Dickey, President of Dartmouth College, on conferring the honorary Master of Arts, captures the widespread respect and affection felt for Joe Dodge:

Onetime wireless operator at sea, longtime mountaineer, student of Mount Washington’s ways and weather, you have been ore than a match for storms, slides, fools, skiers and porcupines.  You have rescued so many of us from both the harshness of the mountain and the soft ways leading down to boredom that you, yourself, are now beyond rescue as a legend of all that is unafraid, friendly, rigorously good and ruggedly expressed in the out-of-doors.  And with it all you gave this College a great skiing son.  As one New Hampshire institution to another, Dartmouth delights to acknowledge you as Master of Arts.  

The following link is to an editorial that appeared in the Boston Globe after Joe’s death: Joe Dodge Obit Editorial

Profile compiled by Sam Demas, Editor, h2h