PINKHAM NOTCH, N.H. — It has been hiked blindfolded and backward. It has seen multiple evolutions of transit, from horse-drawn carriages to steam-powered automobiles to high-powered race cars to a Segway.

In 1857, one man even counted his steps to the top (16,925). It’s been traveled via sled dog team and a camel. In September, motorsports competitor Travis Pastrana zoomed up at 72 mph.

For 150 years, the narrow eight-mile road to the 6,288-foot summit of Mount Washington has been delighting and scaring the daylights out of visitors, with its lack of guardrails and harrowing sheer-cliff drop-offs.

To celebrate the Mount Washington Auto Road’s anniversary this summer, officials are preparing tributes to daredevils, record-holders and drivers whose only claim to fame is a copy of the bumper sticker, “This Car Climbed Mt. Washington.”

David Roy recently recalled his first trip as a tour guide on the road in 1974. He had driven more than halfway, reciting the road’s history, when suddenly his two female passengers disappeared from his rearview mirror. They were lying on the seat, afraid to look out.

“Boy, I wonder if they’re all like this,” Roy recalls thinking.

Visited by about 250,000 people a year, the road up the Northeast’s highest peak is billed as America’s oldest manmade tourist attraction. Mount Washington itself has been dubbed “Home of the World’s Worst Weather,” including a 231-mph gust in 1934 that stood as a world record for more than six decades.

This summer, there will be a car race and horseback- and carriage-only days, in addition to motorcycle climbs and foot and bicycle events.

The anniversary events got started Saturday with “Alton Weagle Day.” In the 1950s, Weagle did a series of “firsts”: trips barefoot, blindfolded and backward, then one pushing a wheelbarrow with a 100-pound sack of sugar in it the whole way.

Participants Saturday accomplished such first-time stunts as unicycling, roller skiing and backing a car all the way up.

Alton Weagle died in 1984 at age 73. “There wasn’t too much that had got him down,” recalled Weagle’s niece Barbara Weagle, 62, of Groveton.

The first company to undertake construction of the toll road blasted a path with black powder but ran out of money. Another firm, the Mount Washington Summit Road Co., took over and still maintains the road.

When the dirt road opened in Aug. 8, 1861, hikers were charged 16 cents, those on horses or driving carriages more.

Today, the road is about 80 percent paved, but otherwise it hasn’t changed much in the intervening 150 years.

“We’ve kept it environmentally and aesthetics-wise intact,” said Sam Appleton, president and great-great-grandson of the original owner. “It’s important to keep the integrity of it.”

The first automobile was driven up Aug. 31, 1899, by steam-car impresario Freelan Stanley and his wife, who made the ascent in two hours, 10 minutes.

Car traffic built slowly, but driving up the road didn’t really blossom until after World War II, said Howie Wemyss, the road’s general manager.

Special anniversary events include the return of the “Climb to the Clouds” car race (June 23-26) after a 10-year absence and a Carriage Road Weekend on July 16 and 17, during which the road for a time will be open only to horseback riders and horse-drawn carriages.

Roy, 60, of Berlin, is looking forward to an August auto road staff reunion.

“Anybody who drives there and works there – it holds a special place in their heart and mind for all time,” he said.

 

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