RMC Newsletter - Summer 2005

Randolph's Early Pathmakers,
1850-1905
By Judith Maddock Hudson

Here in Randolph - once Durand - in eighteen hundred eighty-five - Few the men and none the ladies living then and still alive - Then, in that far distant epoch, ere the railway had been built, Came to Randolph Louis Cutter, scarcely out of blouse and kilt. Here he joined those ancient sages, roaming through the virgin woods, Cook and Peek, Pychowska, Nowell, Edmands, man of many moods, Mrs. Beckwith, Dr. Sargent, Francis Wood and George N. Cross, Watsons of three generations, Uncle Kelsey and his 'hoss', Veterans like Freeman Tirrell, poets like the young Belle Weeks, Lowes of several different ages, fishing in betrouted creeks

The membership at the 1935 Annual Meeting of the Randolph Mountain Club, then celebrating its 25th anniversary, was entertained by Arthur Stanley Pease, who read Durand Hall, an extended piece of doggerel (often a favorite RMC medium), from which these lines are drawn. Pease paid tribute to Randolph's early pathmakers, listing most of the hallowed names we find carved on the granite monument at Memorial Bridge.

These pioneers, together with a few others (whose names perhaps didn't suit Pease's meter or rhyme scheme), developed an intricate network of paths on Randolph's slopes. A virtual explosion of exploration and trail cutting began in 1875 and lasted into the early 20th century.

The first explorations of the Northern Peaks had started earlier, around 1850, when hardy walkers engaged mountain guides to take them up Madison, Adams, and Jefferson. James Gordon of Gorham was the most sought-after guide, and it was he who led the 26-year-old Reverend Thomas Starr King's party in 1857 on the first ascent of the headwall of the ravine we now know as King’s. Starr King published an extensive account of this adventure, describing the scenery in rapturous prose.

How often, in riding along the road in Randolph, where its lines of lifted forest subside into the verdure of the valley, have I looked with longing up to its sheer and sharp-edged walls, -- and farther up to its smooth-faced ledges blazing like mirrors with sunshine upon their moisture, -- up to the curving rampart that unites the two sides of the chasm, and supports the mountain's rocky spire! There, I have said to myself, the very spirit of the hills is concentrated.......

Yet the ravine was generally believed to be unscalable. No guide or hunter could tell what attractions it concealed,..... No party, so far as we could learn, had ever been through it. But Mr. Gordon, who is as much at home in the woods as a bear, and who gets along without a compass in their thickets, by having the instinct of a bee, was ready and anxious to take charge of any person or company that would try to explore and scale it. 1

The party arrived at the top of the headwall, having climbed for nine hours. King rhapsodized further on the surroundings:

The last few rods of the passage out of the ravine led us up a narrow and smooth gateway, quite steep, and carpeted with grass. We sat some time in it, looking at the rocky desolation and horror just about us, balanced by the lovely lines into which the verdure of the western ramparts was broken, -- not knowing what a splendid view was in reserve for us when we should step out onto the ridge. 2

Gordon led many other parties on the Northern Peaks; he is credited with having made a path to the summit of Madison around 1860. This early route was probably a string of blazes (that perhaps he alone could interpret) rather than an actual cleared path as we know today. 3

Randolph's famed guide, Charles E. Lowe, according to his son Vyron's recollections, had “guided parties over Mt. Adams for many years without a trail.” 4 By 1873, a few rugged explorers, including several founders of the Appalachian Mountain Club, had found summer lodgings with Randolph farm families like the Kelseys and the Howkers. Among these men was the AMC’s first Councilor of Improvements, the minister, physician and teacher, William Gray Nowell. In 1875 Nowell and Lowe blazed and cleared the first path to the summit of Mt. Adams from Lowe’s house. The two also built a bark shelter (called “Lowe’s” or, later, “AMC camp”) at an altitude of 3,250 feet, some 3 kilometers up the path. Together with his children Gracie and Fred and high school boys he tutored, Nowell spent many summers living at the camp (and from 1889, at the more substantial shelter, the Log Cabin, that he built on the same site). The youngsters helped with trail work and carefully measured the path’s length in kilometers, posting the metric distances on signboards at regular intervals.

In 1876, Abel Watson and his son Laban, responding to the increasing demand for lodgings, remodeled their farm at the foot of the Northern Presidentials to establish the Ravine House. 5 The hotel was soon an important base for the AMC, and became a summer home for the group of men and a few hardy women who engaged in a veritable frenzy of mountain exploration, trail cutting, and mapmaking in the 1880s and 1890s.

The Ravine House soon attracted a coterie of regular summer guests, among whom was the businessman William H. Peek. An English book publisher who made his fortune from his furniture factory in Chicago, Peek chanced in 1878 to meet Laban Watson at Gorham's train station. Peek commented to his son:

'I wish I could get nearer to that mountain.' 'You can,' said a bystander, 'for my father and I own the farm directly at the base of it and we should be glad to make you comfortable there.' 'Then we will come next summer.' 6

Peek arrived the following summer and kept coming back for the next twenty-five summers. He soon found a kindred spirit in hiking enthusiast and inveterate punner Eugene B. Cook from Hoboken, NJ.

Cook had begun his White Mountain vacations in 1872 at Philbrook Farm in Shelburne, stayed briefly at Sugar Hill, and finally came to the Ravine House in 1882, accompanied by his sisters -- the spinster Edith and Lucia, who was married to a Polish aristocrat, Count Pychowski, and their daughter Marian. Cook was immensely energetic, "a slender wiry man, with long, curly black hair, heavy 'Burnsides' and large merry blue eyes laughing under shaggy brows." 7 A chess player, violinist, and exceptionally strong hiker, Cook was one of the first hikers known to have "run the range." In September 1882 he and George Sargent climbed from the Ravine House, over Madison and the other Northern Peaks, to Washington (where he and his companion dined), down the Crawford Path (over Franklin and Clinton), and back to Randolph by the light of a full moon via the Cherry Mountain Road and Jefferson. Including a supper stop at the White Mountain House at Fabyans, the journey took 20 hours and 21 minutes. 8

George Sargent, Cook's companion on this memorable journey, was a young Boston medical student. These men, Cook's sisters and niece, as well as innkeeper Laban Watson, Charles Lowe and another Randolph farmer and guide, Hubbard Hunt, all became actively involved in exploring the mountains, scouting and blazing trails. Evenings at the inn were spent recounting the day’s accomplishments, planning new adventures, playing parlor games, making music and dancing. Laban Watson who kept a stable and hired out conveyances to his guests arranged carriage outings to more distant valleys.

The pathmakers were a hardy lot. Marian Pychowska described one September day’s ramblings with her uncle Eugene:

There was some snow in the lower woods, but it was really an obstacle after we left Bruin Rock. The steep path up the side of Madison was filled with it, and we sunk in it at almost every step, sometimes ankle- deep, sometimes knee-deep, and once up to our waists. I was very glad to make use of my uncle's tracks, but of course my low India rubbers were small protection and my feet were soon soaked....There was much wading through the snow, finding a great number of tracks..., beautiful views, and then we came down by Triple Falls Brook. 9

Establishing a trail also demanded measuring its distance, naming points of interest, and posting informative signs. Marian wrote that she and her mother “employed three afternoons on the Mt. Madison path in measuring it. Mr. Watson supplied us with a surveyor’s chain, which we have duly carried over the route to a point midway between the upper Salmacis Fall and the treeline.” 10 She also recounted their difficulties in finding a suitable Indian name meaning “Winter’s Home” for what later became Peboamauk Fall in the Ice Gulch. Cook and Peek sometimes drew upon the puns that both men constantly exchanged. In 1899 Cook dubbed a short path between Air Line and Valley Way "Intermezzo Rusticano" after the rusty tin can hung on a tree to mark its beginning.

Two other establishments in Randolph provided lodgings for the burgeoning tourist trade: the expanded Kelsey Cottage (after 1899, the Mt. View House), and a commodious hotel, the Mt. Crescent House, was opened on Randolph Hill in 1883. As the stream of tourists to the mountains increased, all three hotels flourished and a new network of trails was developed from each hotel to scenic points.

The pathmakers' youngest member was Louis Fayerweather Cutter, who, as we have learned from Dr. Pease's verses, first came to the Ravine House in 1885. In his final year at MIT, the young man spent his first Randolph summer exploring the mountains, surveying for a map of Mts. Madison and Adams that he submitted as his thesis. Cutter's early love for the high peaks led him to spend the next sixty summers in the White Mountains. His accurately surveyed maps became the standard for AMC publications; he served as an AMC Councillor (Topography, Improvements, and At Large) and Vice-President; he wrote extensively for Appalachia. Still existing sketches and a formal portrait of Cutter include his iconic bicycle wheel, the device with which he measured trail mileages. At a later time Cutter helped found the RMC, in which he remained active until his death in 1945.

In the late summer of 1890 J. Rayner Edmands came to stay at the Watsons’ hostelry. A meteorologist at the Harvard Observatory, Edmands had long been a summer tramper. As a founding member of the AMC, he had served as Councillor of Explorations as well as participating in scientific activities and map making. Edmands was a colorful character. In the woods, he was known to wear gray knickers, flannel shirt with bright red-topped socks, a red sash and often a red kerchief around his neck. Louis F. Cutter described him as:

exact, careful, ingenious in contriving, planning for the future even in minute details, patient and persistent in carrying out his plans, kind and helpful, hospitable, charming all by his manners and his music. 11

Randolph's George A. Flagg captured the man's essence in his sketch of Edmands, at age 74, striding up Mt. Adams far ahead of the rest of his party. The "old man" is saying, "I feel all right when I get up here." 12

Edmands established mandatory standards for behavior at his bark shelters, Cascade Camp and the Perch. He had a singular method of blanket folding:

"That is not the way we spread blankets at the Perch. Shake it out, please, and begin again. I will show you."

The startled guest obeyed and stood, large-eyed, with the blanket in her hands.

"Now spread it out flat. ...Now fold that side over to here and this side over to there, and the end down to there, and tuck in the first side over the second and turn down the top about one foot. No, that's not quite right. Unfold your last two moves....

The result was a beautiful, wiggle-proof envelope. 13

He had equally strong rules about food:

No onions or cheese, to each of which he had an unconquerable aversion, might be imported into or cooked in these shacks, unless he were absent and hence unable to prevent such desecration. 14

In 1888 and 1890, Edmands had gone to the Colorado Rockies where he had been greatly impressed by the gradual nature of stock trails. Similar paths on the Northern Peaks, he felt, would open the mountains’ splendor for more walkers (especially women with their clumsy garments). His first project was to create a series of paths to provide easy access to the numerous waterfalls in Cascade Ravine. Financing his own endeavor, he hired local axemen to clear trees and create a smooth treadway.

Mr. Edmands was not afraid of side-hill work, and so made more free to choose a location that would give gradients in accordance with his ideas. He had observed how nearly all walkers, especially when carrying packs, are delayed and compelled to slow up, in the descent, by too great steepness, and how most of us, but especially ladies and novices, are discouraged and put out of breath by steep places in ascending. And so his rule was that very steep places are to be avoided in all main paths. 15

Edmands' labor-intensive approach was antithetically opposed to the methods of Cook and Peek, who blazed and minimally cleared trails that gained the summits by the shortest feasible route, steepness be damned.

Altogether the old paths were rough, scratchy (and delightful) going....With the new Edmands paths, beautifully engineered, everything changed. Large flocks of hitherto "un-mountain-fähig", both male and female, streamed up the mountains like a transplanted tea party.

Of course, we young ones greatly preferred the rough paths. Scrambling and leaping was our idea of the best a walking trip could give... Most of the old path-makers were appalled at the thought of "civilizing the woods". 16

A certain amount of conflict arose between the two schools of pathmaking, with both Cook and Edmands refusing to walk each other’s paths. Cook and his friends were incensed when Edmands' renamed the ridge separating Cascade and Castle ravines — it had always been called the Emerald Tongue, and not Israel Ridge. Yet the two men remained civil to one another in musical evenings at the Ravine House, with Cook on the violin and Edmands at the piano.

A final group of pathmakers chose Kelsey Cottage (the Mountain View House) as their summer haven. Joseph Torrey and his three sons, Charles Cutler, Joseph, and Elliot B., first vacationed in the Gorham area in 1881 and climbed Mt. Washington via Tuckerman's Ravine, perhaps trying to retrace the steps of their great-great grandfather Manasseh Cutler, who had scaled the peak on an early scientific expedition of 1784. When the Torrey family came to Randolph in the summer of 1895, they began to create paths connecting their hotel with the post office, church, the Ice Gulch, and other points of interest; they gradually expanded their trail network to include Pine Mt. and Howker Ridge. Charles' colleague and good friend George Foot Moore joined the Torreys at Kelsey Cottage, and, in 1900, the two men commissioned the building of a mountain camp -- Spur Cabin. From here they scouted and cut the Spur Trail up Nowell Ridge, officially opening it in June 1902. C. C. Torrey's labors at trail cutting are documented in his many entries in Spur Cabin's logbooks 17 from 1900-1915.

By the beginning of the 20th century the pathmakers had created an extensive network of trails leading into the ravines and up the major ridges. Connecting paths ran between the major thoroughfares, and short branch trails visited a profusion of fancifully named viewpoints, such as Montevideo or the Tip o’ the Tongue. Trails led to the Crescent Range, the Ice Gulch and the Pond of Safety. Around the three hotels there was a proliferation of pleasure paths, as well as short waterfall or woods trails maintained for less energetic walkers by the individual hotels.

The next chapter in this saga will consider the impact of wide-scale lumbering on the Northern Peaks that began around the turn of the century, destroying not only the lush forests, but many of the trails themselves. This led, in turn, to the founding of the RMC during the summer of 1910.

I am actively seeking any additional comments, corrections, anecdotal materials, or relevant photographs that my readers might have. Please contact me at 111 Amherst Road, Pelham, MA 01002; (413)256-6950; or by E-mail.

Judith Hudson has been coming to Randolph since the age of four or five. Her parents, the Drs. Stephen and Charlotte Maddock, first visited Randolph in 1923 or 1924 at the invitation of the Cutter family. Active members of the RMC, Judy and her husband Al have served in a variety of RMC jobs, including the presidency. Al is currently the Club’s Archivist, and Judy is working on a history of the RMC.

Footnotes

1 Thomas Starr King, The White Hills: Their Legends, Landscape, and Poetry. Boston: Crosby, Nichols, Lee, 1860, p. 352.

2 Starr King, pp. 360-1.

3 By 1883 it was nearly obliterated and had been replaced by other paths. Lucia Pychowska, "Randolph," in Appalachia:3;217 (1883).

4 Reported by Klaus Goetze, Appalachia:27(NS14);248 (1948).

5 For the first year the hostelry was known as the Mt. Madison House.

6 Related by George N. Cross in Randolph Old and New. Boston: Pinkham Press (for the Town of Randolph), 1924, p. 149.

7 Cross' personal recollections written in 1916 , "Randolph Yesterdays," Appalachia:14;55 (1916).

8 Eugene B. Cook, "The Record of a Day's Walk." Appalachia: 4;54-57 (Dec 1884).

9 Mountain Summers, edited by Peter Rowan and June Hammond Rowan, Gorham, NH: Gulfside Press, p. 237.

10 Mountain Summers, p. 100.

11 Louis F. Cutter, "The Edmands Paths and Their Builder," Appalachia:15;136 (August 1921).

12 "From the Sketchbooks of George A. Flagg," Appalachia:32; 357 (June 1959).

13 Hazel de Berard, "Memories of Randolph," Appalachia;31;193 (Dec 1956).

14 Arthur Stanley Pease, Sequestered Vales of Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1946, p. 69.

15 Cutter, "Edmands Paths," p. 138.

16 Hazel de Berard, "Memories," p. 192.

17 Spur Cabin Registers, 1900-1915. Randolph Mt Club Archive, June 2004.