It was the very first mountain cog railway ever constructed. The Washington Mountain Cog Railway is an institution. I will take a ride if I ever return, now wiser and lazier after the passage of more years than I’d like to admit. I didn’t know anything about the cog railway prior to our visit. A mighty hissing steam engine pushed a passenger car.Īnd that’s when we discovered the Mount Washington Cog Railway Here’s what appeared Soon enough we saw that it belching from an ancient machine. What could possibly burn on the barren rock above the tree line? It moved closer. We saw a terrible column of black smoke rising from the valley. Not that this has anything to do with today’s subject. We found the summit picture postcard perfect. Even so it didn’t live up to its fierce reputation during our visit. There, the observatory atop the mountain claims to be the “Home of the World’s Worst Weather”.
Indeed it’s higher than anywhere else in the northeastern United States: 1,917 metres (6,288 feet). One of our stops delivered us to the top of Mount Washington, the highest point in the state of New Hampshire ( map). Imagine though, a time when I once trampled through the wilderness without regard to creature comforts.
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Then it changed again to whatever hotel happened to have an indoor pool and a free breakfast buffet once the kids came along. It changed to Bed-and-Breakfasts Inns after our marriage. We actually tent-camped our way through a string of rustic state parks with few amenities. In 1906, Alexander Cusick of Vermont died while descending the mountain-on a slide board on the railway.Many years ago my fiancé (now wife) and I traveled through northern New England for two weeks. It’s “meant not as a morbid curiosity, but as a pointed reminder-this can be a dangerous place!” the sign read.
One wall in the museum mapped out where all the casualties on the mountain occurred, beginning in 1849. A museum in the center at the top brags that the peak of Mount Washington is home to “the world’s worst weather.” Winds of 231 miles an hour have been recorded here, along with temperatures of minus 47 degrees Fahrenheit. Appalachian Trail hikers wave as you pass ( A Walk in the Woods author Bill Bryson did the same route) some hikers climb up in three or four hours then ride the railway down.Ĭlouds drifted in as I reached the top, then disappeared, unveiling wide views of the Presidential Range and beyond. Opened in 1869, this rack railway, the train’s toothed wheels interlocked to the rails, takes almost an hour to climb past a jumble of rock to the top. The 40-foot-tall face seemed more of a Dick Tracy, with jutting chin and rounded nose. Looking at photos in the small museum where an aerial tram ran up Cannon Mountain and fudge was for sale, the first thing I saw was that Old Man didn’t look that old. The first steel rods and turnbuckles to hold the rocky outcrop in place were set in 1916. It became a state emblem and can be seen on highway signs and the state quarter.Īt the small free museum, I learned locals knew for more than a century that the Old Man was in need of help.
You could see it from the highway until it fell in 2003. The rock is the Old Man of the Mountain, a granite likeness of a man’s profile-made of five interlocking pieces actually-that once jutted out from the top of a hulking green mountain. Old Man of the Mountain Profile Plaza, Franconia Notch State ParkĪ few miles south in Franconia Notch State Park, along I-93, it’s possible to visit a memorial to a rock.
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