Support

Answers to how this site works — building a hike, walking one, badges, and your account.

Getting started

What this site is, and how to find a hike worth doing.

What HistoricTrails.org is - Free, self-guided historic hikes you walk at your own pace.
Finding a hike - Filters, distances, and reading a hike page before you commit a Saturday.
Time and difficulty - How every hike's time and its easy, moderate or strenuous rating are worked out.
Do I need an account? - What works signed out, and what an account adds.
Signing in with an email code - How signing in with an email code works, and how to add a password if you want one.
Finding your way around this site - Where the map is, where your account lives, and where to come back to when you are stuck.
Who owns what you add - You keep the copyright. You license your work to the community under CC BY-SA 4.0; you don't give it away.

Trail mode, the quiz, badges, and walking without a signal.

Trail mode - The guided, phone-sized way to walk a hike.
Walking without a signal - How the offline download works, and what still needs a connection.
Badges - What each badge is, exactly what earns it, and why one might not have appeared yet.
Finding markers - Play the marker hunt. Spot historic markers wherever you explore, snap a photo and build your own collection.

Drawing a route, writing the stops, and publishing when it is ready.

Creating a hike - Starting from a place, the six steps of the builder, and what belongs in each.
Importing a hike - Building a hike in your own tools and bringing it in as a file, updating a hike from a file, with the format, the limits and a complete example.
The route, stops and legs - Placing stops, the trail start and trail end, shaping the walking path, loops and one-way routes, and marking spurs and rides.
Writing stops and quiz questions - What makes a stop worth stopping at, adding photos and planning info, and how to write a question that lands.
Photos and licensing - Uploading your own photos, using photos you found elsewhere, using a photo again on another stop or hike, and removing or deleting one.
Publishing, drafts and version history - How drafts, publishing and version history work together.
When an administrator unpublishes a hike - What it means, what you can still do, and how to reach us.
Private preview links - Show an unpublished draft to someone without an account, using a link that stops working after 72 hours, 7 days or 30 days, as you choose.

Telling a maintainer what worked, what did not, and what has changed.

Rating a hike - One to five stars, and what happens when you pick a low one.
Reporting a problem with a stop - The fastest way to fix a hike is to tell someone while you are standing there.
Logging a hike you finished - Recording that you walked it, which is what earns badges.

What maintaining means, handing it on, and what happens when nobody is home.

Maintaining a hike - What maintaining a hike means, and what happens if you stop.

Settings, privacy, and what we store.

Privacy and what we store - A plain-language summary. The privacy policy is the authoritative version.
Exporting your data - Download a copy of every hike and photo you've contributed, in one zip file.
Choosing a username - It's your profile URL and your credit on hikes you build — pick it deliberately.
Organizations - Post hikes for a historical society, a school, a troop or any other group, and credit the hike to it.