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Mount
Washington
MOUNT
WASHINGTON AND THE
SUMMIT COMMUNITY
To the valley dwelling
Abenaki people the mountain was known as Agiocochook, "Place Of the Great
Storm Spirit", and as Kadaak Wadjo, "The Hidden One." To the early
New England settlers, the mountain was known as "Trinity Height", in
the Crystal Hills. Around 1840, Daniel Webster was guided to the summit by legendary
mountain-man Ethan-Allan Crawford. Mr. Webster reputedly planted his foot on the
peak and proclaimed it "Washington", after our first President, to make
it "official".
)
The
still-standing "Tip-Top House" was completed in 1853 and the Carriage
Road (or Auto Road) was completed in 1861. The Mount Washington Cog Railway ascends
the summit from the West and was the world's first mountain climbing cog-railroad
(1869). The cog-train operates much the same way today as it did since its inception,
when the challenge of its construction was compared to building a "Railway
to the Moon." President Ulysses S. Grant ascended the summit by way of the
cog-train in August 1869, and the party "took dinner". During the latter
part of the nineteenth century the summit was the haven of Boston high society.
The elusive beauty and spiritual enigma are ever imbued in this place we now know as Mount Washington, New Hampshire. I, too, have felt awe and wonder at its many moods --- marveled at the white-on-white world above tree line in winter, taken solace in the clarity of air and light among the clouds and found adventure in its brutality. The mountain is a wild and wondrous place. I, also, have shared in the tremendous sense of community of its hardy year-round residents.
The Mount Washington Observatory, founded in 1932, is a private, not-for-profit, member supported, scientific and meteorological facility. It is the only permanently staffed mountaintop weather observatory in the Country and its many decades of monitoring the elements have led to the mountaintop being called "Home of the World's Worst Weather." The summit crew recorded two wind gusts of 231 miles per hour on April 12,1934 --- a world record that still stands.
)
I
have a 30-year personal relationship with the mountain and the Observatory. The
Observatory has served as my vantage point and second home for the last fifteen
years of my photographic survey. My photo project has become an ongoing, lifelong
documentation. I have placed on long-term loan in the Observatory summit museum,
23 large-format silver images of the mountain and summit inhabitants. Included
in my exhibition are a dozen vintage stereographs from my personal collection.
The Observatory museum is open from late-May to early October weather permitting
and averages thirty thousand visitors a season.
I believe the documentation of the mountain is vital to the preservation of regional lore and identity. I dedicate my efforts and pay homage to those photographers who came before me -- The Kilburn Brothers --- Edward and Benjamin, F.G. Weller, G.H. Aldrich, Guy Shorey, and Bradford Washburn. They accomplished and gave so much to the visual history and legacy of Mount Washington and the Region. I hope to continue their legacy and document this unique place --- ultimately with a book on the history and place we know as Mount Washington.
The mountain has become a place within.
Peter
Bosco, M.F.A.