Mount Washington is one of the places on my bucket list, so I was thrilled to see some rare old photos of it in the 60-year old slides I've been scanning for the past couple weeks. The photo, above, is labeled "View from Mount Washington (East)".
Mount Washington, located in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, holds the distinction of being the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi River with it's peak standing at 6,288 feet above sea level.
Mount Washington's peak is located within Sargent's Purchase, land granted to Jacob Sargent and others in 1832. On the west side of the mountain is Thompson and Meserve's Purchase, a tract of land about 18.5 square miles in area that was purchased for $500 by Samuel W. Thompson of Conway and George P. Meserve of Jackson, New Hampshire, in 1855. It is within this unincorporated town that The Mount Washington Cog Railway was completed in 1869, after three years of construction. The Cog is a rack-and-pinion railway that ascends the western slope of Mount Washington. It is he second steepest operational rack-and-pinion railway in the world.
As you can see in the "Ticket Office" photo, below, the price to ride the Cog in 1961 was $4.95 for adults and $3.00 for children. Today, the price to go halfway to the peak, to Waumbek Station, is $41 for adults and $29 for children, with children under age 4 riding free if they sit on an adult's lap.
The rest of the photos in this Mount Washington collection can be seen here in this short video:
Among this collection of photos was this one of The Mount Washington Hotel, located in Bretton Woods. It was built in 1902 after two years of construction by Italian artisans and is the last of New Hampshire's grand hotels, built in the Renaissance Revival style. The framed photo and others from this collection are available for purchase securely at FineArtAmerica by clicking here. It can also be printed on coffee mugs, t-shirts, bed duvets, shower curtains, face masks, phone covers, pillows and more.
Sources & Additional Reading:
Thompson and Meserve's Purchase, New Hampshire [Wikipedia]
Sargent's Purchase [Wikipedia]
Mount Washington Cog Railway [Wikipedia]
Mount Washington [Wikipedia]