Terms of Service

The terms that cover content you add to HistoricTrails.org.

Version of October 1, 2026

These terms cover everything you add to HistoricTrails.org — hikes, photos, and more. You keep the copyright to all of it. These terms explain the license you give everyone else to use it.

What you add to a hike

This covers anything you write or add to the site, including an edit to a hike someone else started. Photos you upload follow the same idea, with a few extra points in the next section.

It stays yours

You own what you contribute. When you add it here, you're licensing it to the community, not giving it away.

• You keep the copyright. HistoricTrails.org never takes ownership of your work.
• You can publish, reuse, adapt or sell your own work anywhere else — in a book, on your own website, on another trail site or app — without asking us.
• The license is non-exclusive, so you stay free to license the same work to anyone else, on any terms you choose.
• Your work isn't locked in here. You can take a copy of it with you whenever you like.

The license you give everyone

• You license it to everyone under CC BY-SA 4.0: anyone may share and adapt it, even commercially, as long as they credit it and share their version under the same license.
• Credit is given as "HistoricTrails.org and contributors," linked back to the hike.
• If you edit a hike someone else started, you keep the copyright to your edit, and it's licensed the same way.
• Once someone has received your work under CC BY-SA 4.0, they may keep using that copy under the license. The license never transfers your copyright: the work is still yours.
• Only add what you have the right to share.

Photos you upload

When you upload a photo you took, you confirm:

• You took the photo.
• Anyone recognizable in it has agreed to be shown.
• You release it to everyone under CC BY-SA 4.0: anyone may reuse it if they credit you and share their version under the same license.

The license you grant HistoricTrails.org

You also grant HistoricTrails.org a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, adapt, publish, distribute and display the photo in any medium, and to let our service providers do the same on HistoricTrails.org's behalf.

You keep the copyright. This license is non-exclusive, so it never stops you from licensing the photo to anyone else.

HistoricTrails.org will not sell your photo on its own.

Removal

A photo can be taken down by the person who uploaded it, by the maintainer of a hike it is on, or by us. The file itself is retained unless you ask us to remove it — use our contact form to request that a photo come down.

When these terms change

This page always shows the current version's date. When the terms change, you'll be asked to agree to the new version before making any more edits.