White Mountains
a mountain chain of New England, regarded as an outliner of the Appalachian range, commences at the head waters of the Aroostook river, in Maine, where its first summit is Mount Katahdin, and extends in a broad plateau, from 1,600 to 1,800 feet high nearly across New Hampshire, where it has 20 bold peaks, with deep narrow gorges, wild valleys, beautiful lakes, lofty cascades and torrents, forming the "Switzerland of America," and a favorite resort of summer tourists.
Mount Washington is the highest summit in New England. The other peaks of White Mountains proper are Mount Madison, Mount Clay, Mount Jefferson, Mount Monroe, and Mount Adams. In the Franconia group are Lafayette and Moose Hillock. These mountains furnish the chief sources of the Connecticut, Merrimac, and Androscoggin rivers. The rocks are ancient metamorphic, with naked granite and gneiss. There are five "notches," or passages through the mountains: the White Mountain notch, through which the Saco river passes; the Franconian notch, which permits the passage of the Pemigewasset; the Pinkham notch, and the Grafton and Dixville notches, through which flows the Androscoggin. A carriage road has WHITE SEA been constructed to the summit of Mount Washington on the E. side, and a railroad on the W. side, the latter completed in 1869. The White Mountains were first visited by white men in 1642, but no settlements were made in the region till about 1771. Since 1868 the mountains have been explored by the New Hampshire Geological Survey.
There is a meteorological station on the summit of Mount Washington.