If you’ve ever happened to wander outside in New Hampshire, you will have noticed that we reside in a state with a vast amount of natural beauty, at all times rugged and scenic.  A perfect example of this is Crawford Notch State Park.

The day my younger brother visiting from Colorado and I explored Crawford Notch turned out to have perfect weather. The onslaught of heat and humidity from the preceding weeks had lessened, the humidity falling as rain the night before.  I was thankful for that, and also for the unthreatening bit of cloud cover rolling lazily overhead.  After waking my brother up, feeding the dog, throwing together some PB & Js and scribbling some vague Internet directions onto a sticky note, which I then slapped onto the dash of my car, we were off.

Located about an hour and a half north of Concord, Crawford Notch rests in the heart of the White Mountain National Forest.    Not only is Crawford Notch home to some of the best views and hikes in the Northeast, it also boasts an impressive history.

In 1771, Timothy Nash, a moose tracker, came upon the great split between the mountains that we now know as Crawford Notch.  Thinking that this was the path through the mountains described in Native American lore, Nash implored the governor of New Hampshire to build a road through the split.  Though skeptical, after Nash geared up and hiked through the Notch, the governor agreed.  The first road was officially opened in 1775, though at that point it would be more accurate to label it a trail.

The first family to permanently settle in the Notch was the Crawfords (no points for guessing who the Notch was named after).

Abel Crawford eventually established an inn, bringing tourists to the area for many of the same reasons that we visit the Notch today.  Abel Crawford and his son, Ethan Allen, gradually became famous mountain guides.  Eventually the Crawfords cleared what is now the Crawford Path, a trail leading to the summit of Mount Washington. Opening in 1819, the Crawford Path is now the oldest continuously used trail in the United States.  For a time, horses were popular on the Crawford Path.  Ethan faced wild animals, fires, storms and floods as he continued blazing new trails, becoming a bit of a legend in the process.

We drove past the grandiose Mount Washington Hotel, where world leaders had hammered out the  Bretton Woods Agreement in the wake of World War II in 1944.  Not long after that we pulled over into a parking space near the Crawford Depot, the quirky, yellow historic building that was built in 1891 as a train station for the Portland & Ogdensburg Railroad, the top railroad for anyone seeking the outdoors.  Today the Crawford Depot serves as a historic site, information center and gift shop, where I bought my brother a hiker’s crossing sticker to commemorate his first New Hampshire hike.

It wasn’t hard to decide what trail to hike, and as soon as we parked, we took off up the Crawford Path towards the summit of Mount Pierce, part of the Presidential Range.  The forested and rocky trail wasn’t too difficult, and all along the way we encountered what is often lost in the daily bustle of our increasingly busy lives: a sense of camaraderie and community.  It’s nearly impossible to pass a hiker without engaging in some sort of conversation, and more often than not you’ll find yourself discussing the pros and cons of various gear, exchanging snacks, taking each other’s group pictures and swapping distance estimates to hikers going in the opposite direction.  To this day, I have never seen a hiker in a bad mood.  Pensive, yes, exhausted, certainly, but never in a bad mood.

The trail changed quickly as we neared the summit of Pierce.  The winds picked up and we put on our jackets, stopping at the top to eat lunch and admire the vast, green panoramas before us.  Mount Washington loomed ahead of us, its peak obscured by fast-moving clouds, making it appear mysterious.      We made better time than I thought, so I convinced my brother to trek onward to the top of Mount Eisenhower, a fairly short ridgeline hike away.  When we reached the top of Eisenhower, we were blasted with even stronger winds.  The clouds turned darker.   We sat around the giant pile of stones.  There were a few other hikers who also stopped, coming from the opposite direction.  Eisenhower was as far as we would make it, but after seeing peak rising after peak, it’s easy to see how hikers decide to come for much longer excursions, something I now had the urge to do.  After a few more pictures , we turned back the way we had come.

The weather at the base of Crawford Notch was sunny and wind-free, leading me to wonder if it had ever even changed at this level.  It would take nearly two hours to drive back to Henniker, so we packed up.  But before leaving we stopped by the Flume and Silver Cascades, watching the water tumble down the rocky sides of the mountain.  It’s easy to see why they had to put in a train depot—anyone traveling through Crawford Notch would feel obligated to stop and admire what New Hampshire has to offer.