The White Mountains Paperback

Since the development of photography in the midnineteenth century, the camera has been used as a tool of both discovery and preservation. Photographs bring alive our image of the past, and can open a floodgate of memories and nostalgia or inspire curiosity and a sense of history. The White Mountain region, with its lofty, granitecapped peaks, steep-sided notches and sweeping valleys, long ago captured the public s imagination. The Cristall hills may have been known to European explorers as early as the 1520s when high mountains were sighted off the New England coast by Giovanni da Verrazano; Darby Field s pioneering 1642 ascent of Mount Washington initiated a period of discovery that is still taking place today. Based on several remarkable photographic collections, this book presents a chronological record of the people, localities and events that have given these ancient hills their extraordinary character. These images, combined with illuminating and insightful captions, bring the reader on a nostalgic journey through the rich social and cultural history of what was once called the Switzerland of America. "