The Allegheny Outdoor Club, based in Warren, with more than 100 members, is celebrating its 42nd year of enjoying non-motorized sports in the great outdoors. Activities include hiking, bicycling, cross-country skiing, kayaking and canoeing, but its roots lie in hiking.

A forerunner of the AOC was the Allegheny Hiking Club, which formed in Warren in 1939. Ike Reed, a local barber, is credited with founding the club which stayed in existence only a few short years, interrupted by World War II.

In May of 1968 a fledgling Warren hiking club, the Allegheny Outdoor Club, was reborn when Ted and Sylvia Grisez, transplants from Eastern Pennsylvania and both lovers of nature, organized the group. The first hike was held north of Warren in an area known as the Akeley Swamp, and, true to nature, it rained – hard.

But the club flourished in subsequent years, increased its membership and became Northwestern Pennsylvania’s premier outdoor club. The AOC was inducted into the Warren County Sport Hall of Fame in 2008.

Its membership is diverse, from a widespread geographic area, including primarily from small towns in Northwestern Pennsylvania and Southwestern New York.

The early AOC members in fact laid out many of the hiking trails in the Allegheny National Forest, including 50 miles of the North Country Scenic Trail which traverses nearly 97 miles through the forest, the only national forest in Pennsylvania.

Presently the club maintains partnerships with the USDA-Forest Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, The Pennsylvania Game Commission, the Watershed Improvement Needs coalition and Penn Soil Resource Conservation & Development Council. It also does refuse pickup on eight miles of roadway for PennDOT, as well as trimming the North Warren Hike/Bike Trail.

The AOC’s active schedule can be viewed online at www.alleghenyoutdoorclub.org.