The answers to 6 burning questions about Mount Washington
Head up New Hampshire’s tallest peak with these facts about Mount Washington tucked into your backpack.
As we approach hiking season, it’s good to remember that Mount Washington is much more than a 6,288-foot peak with some of the world’s fastest wind and chilliest temperatures. The Northeast’s tallest peak is rugged, tough, craggy, and irresistible—an iconic landmark that in many ways reflects the character of New Hampshire and its residents.
For centuries, the mountain has been a sacred place for indigenous people, a lure for explorers, and an inspiration for some of America’s best-known artists, writers, and famous personalities. It attracts 250,000 to 400,000 visitors annually who hike, explore, and marvel at its awe-inspiring beauty and views. Some of the famous people who have been drawn to the peak include Henry David Thoreau, Winslow Homer, P.T. Barnum, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Edison, Alfred Hitchcock, Babe Ruth, Joan Crawford, Jay Leno, and Ulysses S. Grant. And who could blame them? It’s a place of awe, mystery, legend, and allure.
Here are some fun and weird facts about Mount Washington that can make for great conversation fodder as you head to the top with friends and family.
1. Where did Mount Washington get its name?
Mount Washington is at the heart of the Presidential Range in the 750,000-acre White Mountain National Forest, whose name didn’t start as a tribute to our first president. It was called Agiocochook—meaning “home of the great spirit” or “place of the storm spirit”—by the Abenaki people centuries before Europeans first arrived in what is now New Hampshire in the early 1600s. It was also known as Kodaak Wadjo (meaning “the top is hidden”) and Waumbik (meaning “white rocks”) by other indigenous nations. The mountain was considered so sacred that climbing to its summit was forbidden, according to the Appalachian Mountain Club.
Reverend Manasseh Cutler first referred to it as Mount Washington on a 1784 scientific expedition, four years before General George Washington became president. It was a time when naming places after the great Revolutionary War hero was all the rage. However, the first written reference to Mount Washington dates back to 1792, and the earliest map with the name was published four years later.
2. How do you get to the top?
You can get to the naked summit (no trees can grow up there) in three ways.
The stalwart can climb. However, given the steep grade and precarious weather conditions, it isn’t an easy trek. There are several trails to the top, with the most popular being the Tuckerman Ravine Trail, which is 7.7 miles round trip. Other options include the Lion Head Trail, which is steeper and rougher, and the Jewell Trail, considered the easiest trail (although it’s certainly not easy). Hikers should always check the weather and current summit conditions before they set out.
You can also choose to drive to the tippy top on the 7.6-mile Mount Washington Auto Road, which starts at Pinkham Notch and takes about an hour round trip. The road was first opened in 1861 and is considered to be the country’s oldest man-made tourist attraction. It will set you back $36 for adults and $15 for children, and you can be one of the 40,000 drivers a year who earn the ubiquitous “This Car Climbed Mount Washington” bumper sticker seen far and wide in New Hampshire and beyond.
Lastly, train enthusiasts can choo-choo to the top of the mountain on the Cog Railway. Riders can choose from a three-hour trip on a vintage-style steam engine or a 45-minute climb on a biodiesel train.
3. What’s at the top when you get there?
The summit offers a breathtaking 130-mile view, which, on a clear day, includes sightings of Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Maine, Quebec, and the Atlantic Ocean.
There is also a lot of extreme weather; some even consider it the worst weather on Earth. The highest wind speed recorded on the summit was 231 miles per hour on April 12, 1934, the highest wind speed on Earth ever recorded by a human, according to the Mount Washington Observatory. The coldest temperature at the summit was -47 degrees Fahrenheit, recorded in January 1934 and again in February 2023.
There are fun places to take cover, warm up, and learn things at the top. The Mount Washington State Park is situated at the summit. It includes the Sherman Adams Visitor Center, which is open daily during the summer and fall and has a cafeteria, restrooms, and gift shops. The park is also home to the Mount Washington Observatory and its museum, including the “Extreme Mount Washington” exhibit. There is also an information desk and a glass-enclosed viewing area with a 360-degree view of the northern Presidential Range.
The historic stone Tip Top House, built in 1853, is one of the oldest mountaintop structures in the country, where, beginning in 1887, “Among the Clouds,” the mountain’s newspaper, was printed. The building is currently closed due to renovations.
4. How many fatalities have there been?
Yup. People have died trying to get to the top of Mount Washington.
According to the Mount Washington Avalanche Center, an average of 25 people a year require rescue assistance on the mountain. To date, 172 people have perished while climbing since records were kept in 1849. Causes range from exposure to the extreme weather, avalanches, heart attacks, hypothermia, and climber inexperience. In addition, there have been two fatal accidents resulting in nine deaths in the Cog Railroad’s 155-year history: One in 1929 and eight in 1967, when eight people died and 70 were injured in a derailment. In 1880, a stagecoach driven by a tipsy operator flipped and killed one passenger on the Mount Washington Auto Road. Two more people have died in crashes over the past 161 years. In
There has also been at least one murder on the mountain. On Thanksgiving Day, 2002, two days after being reported missing, 52-year-old Louise Chaput, a psychologist from Quebec, was found stabbed to death off the Glen Boulder Trail in Pinkham Notch, near the base of the Mt. Washington Auto Road, according to the New Hampshire Department of Justice. Her murderer was never found.
5. How has Mount Washington been represented in art, literature, and film?
Mount Washington’s splendor has inspired American artists, poets, and filmmakers since the 19th century, when the White Mountains were first truly accessible to visitors and visionaries by rail.
One of those visitors was 19th-century writer Henry David Thoreau, who first climbed Mount Washington and wrote about it in his famous account, “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.”
An entire school of American painting—the White Mountain School, part of the Hudson River School—drew artists like Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, and Francis Bicknell Cropsey to the White Mountains and specifically Mount Washington during the 19th century. Their paintings are in collections in museums around the world. That includes the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, which curated “Mount Washington: The Crown of New England” in 2016.
Filmmakers have also been moved to set their stories here. Some of the earliest American silent movies were made here by the American Mutoscope Company over 120 years ago. More recently, the 2022 Hollywood movie “Infinite Storm,” starring Naomi Watts, was inspired by the true story of wilderness guide Pam Bales, who single-handedly rescued a hiker she encountered during her descent of Mount Washington in a violent blizzard. The mountain is as big a star as the actors; however, the flick was filmed in the Slovenian portion of the Alps.
6. What are some of the best stories to tell about the mountain?
When indigenous people first saw Mount Washington, they imbued it with spiritual powers and beliefs. Through the centuries, its awe-inspiring presence has spawned many legends and a few ghost stories.
In the 1896 book “Myths and Legends of Our Own Land,” author Charles M. Skinner writes of the death of Chief Passaconaway, leader of the Pennacook people. As the story goes, at “120 years old,” he was hauled off in a throne perched on a sapling sled, across the ice of Lake Winnipesaukee through the woods and finally to the summit of Agiocochooks (Mount Washington) at a speed so great that he burst into flames and “shot like a meteor toward the sky and was lost amid the stars of the winter night.”
Memorial markers on the mountain are also rumored to be haunted by an entity called “The Presence.” One of those is the marker named for Lizzi Bourne, who died on the summit in 1855. Bourne, her cousin, and her uncle began a trip from the base of the mountain in the afternoon of September 14, 1855. She died of exposure eight hours later when she got caught in a nasty storm and lost her companions, who had taken shelter at the Tip Top summit house. They discovered her frozen body the next day, not far from the shelter. Loved ones buried her in her home state of Maine and built a memorial at the spot she was discovered, and where her spirit allegedly wanders to this day.
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