The Evolution of Mt Eisenhower

Autumn on Eisenhower 

The Evolution of Mount Eisenhower

Legends and lore around the most favored Peak of The Southern Presidential Mountain Range

It’s not surprising that the most storied of New Hampshire’s mountain peaks are those of the Presidential Range. Of course, Mt Washington, known to earliest native people, within the Algonquain language group, as Waumbik, meaning "white rocks"; and to the Abenaki - whose presence dominated the region known as N’adakina as Agiochook or Agiocochook during the period before and coincident with European contact.

But Mount Washington’s stories have overshadowed many other interesting stories, among them that the Mountain in the Presidentials named Jackson is not named in honor of President Andrew Jackson but rather a little-known NH State Geologist, of the 19th Century, Charles Thomas Jackson.

The mountain named Franklin, was indeed named in honor of Benjamin Franklin, but - as most will (hopefully) know - old Ben was not ever President. The naming party just ran out of Presidents before they ran out of peaks.

Here, is where we come to the focus of this entry in our newly established “Anamaki Chronicles” series - an effort to tell the stories of New Hampshire and the surrounding areas in a broader cultural context: The story of the evolution of Mount Eisenhower, well it has a lot of twists and turns..

But before we delve into the interesting journey from an unnamed or unknown mountain top in the Abenaki lexicon to “Dome Mountain”, “Pleasant Dome”, “Mount Pleasant” and finally today to “Mount Eisenhower,” let’s first review the very first colonial ascents of the region.

Darby Field is credited as the first (white) man to ascend Mt Washington, then known as Agiochook or Agiocochook in 1642. It is said that he was assisted by Abenaki guides, but other than speculation regarding where the guides “disappeared” to in the final miles of the journey we know very little of what transpired.

One credible source among the Abenaki leadership claims that the guides would not summit the mountain because of the superstition that it was “the place of the Gods” and therefore forbidden. But ongoing infighting among people claiming Abenaki heritage, sadly, has created reason to be justifiably skeptical of the veracity or certainty of many such claims.

Field’s motives for making the trip have been described variously as adventure, treasure hunting, and - most recently as commercial - seeking ways to access the fur trade around the Lake Champlain area.

Part of the reason that so much of this lies shrouded in mystery is Field himself. No truly first-hand accounts exist because, according to other existing “accounts” of the trip, Darby Field was “illiterate” .

This was, in fairness, not all that unusual and may explain why so many different spellings and pronunciations of Native names exist, even today.

It may very well be that the mountain first referenced as “Dome Mountain”, Pleasant Dome and then “Mount Pleasant” was also first ascended by Field, as new evidence has recently arisen calling into question what was initially believed to be Field’s route up Washington from the East; focusing, instead, on a southeastern route from the area now known as Crawford Notch, perhaps what is today referred to as the Montalban Ridge.

The route is postulated to have been “crafted” from a series of Indian trails through the region.

More than 150 years later, the Crawford Path, built by the storied Crawford Family of northern New Hampshire, would become what today is known as the “oldest continually used hiking trail in the US”. It too is presumed to have relied on many of these same (or related) trails, trodden by Algonquian and Abenaki Natives for thousands of years prior to the migration of European colonials to the region.

Legend has it that Field climbed the mountain or, more likely, mountains, in June of that year to demonstrate to the Abenaki chief Passaconaway that the Europeans bargaining for tribal land were not subject to the gods believed to inhabit the summit, a primarily political move that was presumed to facilitate the colonists' northern expansion.

Since all religious arguments of this sort are based on myth and there is no evidence of any that are actually subjected to a test of scientific veracity, today we recognize them as pre-colonial and colonial power plays, religious arguments commonly made as a means to justify what is usually unjust treatment of those considered “lesser” human beings.

The grandaddy of them all, with respect to the American continent, being the Doctrine of Discovery - most commonly referred to as the “Doctrine of Manifest Destiny”.

Field again summited Agiocochook in October 1642 on an early surveying expedition that created maps of land as far as Maine, which allowed people from the Massachusetts colony to identify arable coastal areas. Recent discoveries of communication regarding possible trade routes accessing the lucrative fur trade - and in particular ways to develop trade that cut into France’s dominance in the business- suggest that this was a much more potent motive for the two scouting trips made by Field.

So, routes over and around the various Presidential peaks were probably all under consideration if a mercantile motive was the real reason and going over the dome shaped summit of what would come to be called Mt Pleasant would have been one of the more easy options.

References to the name “Dome”, prior to the more formally adopted Mt Pleasant seem to be scant and even the reason for the first official iteration - Mt. Pleasant seem to be without any solid evidence for the reasoning. What we do know for certain is that all of the peaks not yet renamed along the ridge received their first “Colonial christening” in 1820 when a party from Lancaster, New Hampshire, guided by Ethan Allen Crawford, explored and named several peaks in the Presidential Range including Mt Pleasant.

However, the specific origin of the name Mount Pleasant.

Now, it is here where I diverge further from the known and documented facts into the realm of anecdote, word of mouth legend and perhaps fantasy, but since virtually nothing is known or yet discovered I am going to slip into the discussions around more than a hundred years of campfires around which mountain men, mountain women (yes there were some) and later a group of mountaineers I will claim as my brethren, guides sat, slept and told tales.

The first of these does have some scant evidence but it is barely a seed corn from which the fireside story sprung.

In 1846 Lucy Crawford published a book called "History of the White Mountains". Lucy was the wife (and first cousin) of Ethan Allen Crawford. This historical work chronicles the experiences of her husband, Ethan Allen, and other early settlers and explorers in the White Mountains region of New Hampshire. It is considered the first book about the White Mountains and a classic text in the region's history.

In her book, Lucy from time to time mentions something called “O-Be-Joyful”. It was a local form of what might have been called “moonshine” in other regions and it was said to have been among the supplies borne by the Crawford party on this fateful trip. one hundred years of fireside chat has it that the members of the group - perhaps excepting the Reverend said to be among them, settled on the name of the mountain because after consumption of unknown quantities of O-Be-Joyful it was agreed that this was a “most pleasant peak” and the name stuck.

A humorous story grew from this fireside chat that required me to take a moment to tell you about Cairns.

In mountainous areas everywhere, and the Whites are no exception, piles of stones are used to designate the path of a trail. These are called Cairns. In general the stones are piled to a height that seems appropriate to provide a clear path for hikers to follow.

In the case of Mount Pleasant something strange happened to the cairn at the summit of the mountain. Regular guides, or hikers would add a stone or two each time they hiked to the summit. Without a lot of fanfare, they just seemed to know it was the thing to do, certainly the “whisper campaign” had something to do with it because over a number of years the size of the Cairn exceeded 15-20 feet making it visible from a long distance. Thus, the profile of Mt Pleasant when seen from the valley floor, suddenly began to change, until it took on the form of a very large breast.