The Cog proposes to construct two 500-foot-long platforms, supported by trestles, on either side of the existing rail line near the Lizzie Memorial. Sarah Stewart, Commissioner of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, introduced the Cog’s March 4 presentation and expressed her hope that Lizzie’s Station would increase visitation to the state park. His solution is to disperse congestion to despoil a suburb the summit. Presby proclaimed that when his project is completed, congestion “is gone.” Washington Commission (MWC), an advisory board to the NH Division of Parks and Recreation, Presby announced plans to build a high-elevation hostelry offering “upscale accommodations” near the memorial erected in honor of Lizzie Bourne, a 20-year-old hiker who perished in foul weather in 1855 a short distance from the Tip Top House on the summit. Wayne Presby, President of the Cog, abandoned the idea in 2018, the Lizzie’s Station proposal grew out of secret discussions with the AG and NH Division of Parks and Recreation which manages the Mount Washington State Park.Īt the Mameeting of the Mt. Numerous established conservation groups joined the opposition. A grassroots group, Keep the Whites Wild secured 20,000 signatures opposing the plan. In December 2016, the Cog Railway announced plans to open a 35-room hotel and restaurant, the Skyline Lodge, located within the Cog’s right-of-way at the terminus of the rail line. The Cog can move its rolling concession and dining cars to the summit during periods when the Sherman Adams Building, which houses state-run concessions and restrooms, is closed. The Cog agrees to refrain from further development in its right-of-way on state park land in return for the State’s support throughout the Lizzie permitting process. On May 20, the State and Cog signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) covering the Lizzie Project. In March, the Cog Railway, which has operated since 1869, proposed a new hotel development at 5,800-feet in elevation, a short walk from the summit. The State plans to build a new system with a 7,500 gallon a day capacity because it anticipates-and supports-increased visitor levels that will exacerbate congestion. The summit’s overtaxed waste water treatment plant, with a capacity of 5,000 gallons a day, is out of compliance with its permit. There are as many as 5,000 visitors on peak summer days. The Division of Parks and Recreation estimates that close to half a million visitors ride, drive, or hike to the summit annually. The State has no idea of how many visitors the summit can handle before overcrowding inflicts serious ecological and climatological damage to the fragile alpine tundra and its flora and fauna. Washington is a paved-over, debris-littered, congested disgrace. Washington State Park on the summit of Mt. One Abenaki name for this wild, dangerous peak was Maji Neowaska, where a demon, or bad spirit, was supposed to dwell on the highest peak. He lives in Stratford, N.H.įrom time immemorial, the Abenaki believed it a sacrilege to climb New England’s highest mountain. His grandmother, Natalie Bourne, would strenuously object to the unauthorized commercialization of the Bourne name. He also wrote “You Had a Job for Life” (2018), an oral history of the Groveton paper mill. Jamie Sayen is author of the forthcoming “Children of the Northern Forest” (Yale University Press, 2023) about the ecology and land-use history of the largely undeveloped Acadian forests of northern New England. Coal burning Cog approaching the Lizzie Bourne Memorial.
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