Mount Washington is the highest mountain in the northeastern United States and part of the Presidential Range of the White Mountains. Named for George Washington, it was first scaled by Europeans in 1642. In 1819, Ethan Allen Crawford and his father, Abel, blazed the first trail up the mountain, now the oldest mountain trail in continuous use in the United States. After the railroad reached nearby Gorham, NH, in 1851, White Mountain tourism entered a golden age, and two years later 3,400 visitors climbed Mount Washington. To serve growing numbers of travelers, the Summit House was built in 1852 and at its largest could house and feed hundreds of guests, while the smaller Tip-Top House, built in 1853, was the only building to survive a devastating 1908 fire and remains the only evidence of that era on the summit today. As the summit became a destination for sightseers, access improved with a carriage road completed on the east side in 1861 and, on the west side in 1869, the world's first mountain-climbing cog railway, built by Sylvester Marsh of Littleton, NH. The Mount Washington Auto Road and the Mount Washington Cog Railway still carry about 230,000 people a year to the summit, while about 50,000 hike the mountain annually. The summit is also known for extreme weather: on clear days visitors can see five states and Canada, but poor weather is more common; in 1934, winds of 231 miles per hour were recorded there as a world record at the time; the average temperature is 26 F; hurricane-force winds occur about 110 days each year; and snow, possible in any month, averages 21.2 feet annually. Observatories to measure these conditions have stood on the summit since the mid-19th century, and today the Mount Washington Observatory continues that work in the Sherman Adams Summit Building, constructed in 1979.
