Trail of Years: Horses on Crawford Path

AMC Outdoors, April 2000

As you scramble up the steeper parts of the Crawford Path today, say, just before reaching the summit of Mount Franklin, you might pray for some kind of assistance—probably not in the form of a horse, however. This just doesn't feel like equine-friendly turf. But horseback ascents were the rage for at least 60 years in the 19th century. Hiking wasn't as popular in those early days of Mount Washington exploration, Howe explains. "It wasn't the way to go up the mountain. They left it to the demented energetic or scientist types."

In the magical days of mountain exploration, of naming mountains on a whim (Mount Deception was named by three ladies wandering Crawford's backyard while their husbands were on Mount Washington), of cutting a path and then taking ownership of it, the bridle paths of the White Mountains were all named after their builders: Crawford, Davis, Thompson, Fabyan, and Edmands. They were popular and well used, though the Davis Path was short-lived as a bridle path due to its tiring length and lack of views.

From the horse's perspective, however, muses Howe, the work wasn't cushy. "The Crawford Path was not at all easy to get up. Plus, it was very wet in there." Joseph Hall, a civil engineer who claimed it was his idea to refurbish the path for horses, built a corduroy path all the way up, laying logs close up against each other width-wise across the path—like corduroy cloth. There are also remnants of iron pins along the path, sunk into the ground to provide traction for slippery hooves.

After the horses got up to the ridge line it was likely a little easier going, but Howe swears he still finds remnants of the Crawfords' original stonework up there—"plum- or orange-sized" rocks put in to give the horses some stability on the steeper rises. "You can still see crescents worn into the rock [above treeline]," he says. These were the hairpin turns of the switchbacks for the horses.

Lucy hints at just how much of an undertaking this was for the animals:

Thus we drilled our horses . . . six days in a week. . . . The only time they had to eat was a few hours designed for rest, but in this way we travelled, but not without remorse of conscience on my part, as our treatment of the dumb beasts was rather inhuman.

The years of bridle paths and horseback summits came to a close about 1860, a few years before the earliest AMC hikers had begun to gear up. By this time, the carriage road up Mount Washington was in operation, soon followed by the cog railway, "providing much more comfort for those who preferred to climb their mountains sitting down," says Howe. Until the AMC came along, traffic and trail maintenance on the path appear to have waned. The third issue of Appalachia (1877) calls for improvements: "[The Crawford Path] needs renewing; and the work could easily be accomplished . . . by a party encamping in the Saco Valley with a stout woodsman as auxiliary."

Ethan, plagued in his later years by debt and illness, lost his inn to creditors in 1837, returned to Vermont, but came back to the White Mountains a few years later. He died in 1846, Lucy in 1869, and both are buried in Bretton Woods, near Fabyan's Station.

 Trail of Years, main article  | The Crawfords of Crawford Notch  |
Building a Trail, 1819-Style  | Horses on Crawford Path  | Life After Ethan