Mount Washington, known for having some of the world's harshest weather, recently gained a vital new connection through a fiber optic cable installation completed by White Mountain Cable Construction in April 2025. This new cable runs along the historic Mount Washington Cog Railway, establishing an important redundancy for communications at the summit. Fiber Mounted Alongside Historic Tracks The new fiber optic line consists of approximately three miles of All-Dielectric Self-Supporting (ADSS)...

The Mount Washington Cog Railway is the world’s first mountain-climbing cog railway, invented by Sylvester Marsh of Campton, New Hampshire. Inspired after struggling to climb the mountain in 1852, Marsh proposed a train that could carry passengers to the summit. 1858: Marsh received a charter from the New Hampshire Legislature, despite ridicule from some who called it a “railway to the moon.” 1866: Construction began after the Civil War. July 3, 1869: The first successful ascent to the summit ...

For our homeschool technology unit, we’re studying Edwin Howard Armstrong — the inventor of frequency modulation (FM) radio. To connect history to real places, we’re visiting two peaks that shaped FM broadcasting: Mount Washington in New Hampshire and West Peak in Meriden, Connecticut. The Summit Broadcast Breakthrough In 1937, Armstrong worked with the Yankee Network to move their experimental FM station, W1XER, to the summit of Mount Washington. The location’s 6,288-foot elevation made it id...

As part of our homeschool studies in fiber optics, we’re exploring one of the most surprising nodes of high-speed infrastructure in New England: the summit of Mount Washington. Once isolated and reliant on diesel generators and limited radio communications, the mountain now boasts buried power and fiber optic connectivity supporting science, safety, and remote learning. Grid Power Reaches the Peak In 2009, Mount Washington was connected to the electrical grid for the first time via underground...