Kancamagus Highway audio tour

Lincoln

Loon Mountain

Loon Mountain got its start with Sherman Adams — a New Hampshire native and Dartmouth man who'd just left his job as Eisenhower's chief of staff and quipped he was heading off “to operate a ski lodge.” That lodge became a full resort by 1966.

Lincoln

The Old Man of the Mountain

The mountain everyone actually talked about was the formation on that ridge — the Old Man of the Mountain, a craggy profile in the cliffside that became the most famous face in the state, plastered on license plates and postcards for generations. It finally gave way and collapsed in May of 2003.

East of Lincoln

Pemigewasset Wilderness

Forty-five thousand acres that make up New Hampshire's largest wilderness area. What's wild to think about is that this whole tangle of forest, now thick and quiet enough to earn federal wilderness protection, was once crisscrossed by the biggest logging railroad network in the White Mountains — the woods you'd walk through today have essentially grown back from scratch.

Toward Kancamagus Pass

Mount Osceola

Named for Osceola, the Seminole leader from the early 1800s, that 4,340-foot summit is the tallest thing looking down over Waterville Valley. There used to be a fire lookout tower up top that stretched the view even further, but it came down in the late seventies.

Near Bear Notch Road

Livermore

This was once a company logging town built by the Saunders family in the 1870s. The last mill shut in 1928, the last residents left in 1949, and the state dissolved the town two years later, leaving it the ghost town you're passing through now.

Passaconaway

Russell-Colbath House

A little wood-frame farmhouse built around 1831 by Thomas and Amzi Russell, the last surviving homestead from the days when families actually lived and farmed in the Swift River valley before the whole area got folded into national forest land. The Forest Service runs it as a small museum now.

Looking northeast

Mount Washington

Back in April of 1934, the observatory crew on the summit clocked a wind gust of 231 miles per hour. That stood as the fastest wind speed ever recorded on the planet for over sixty years, and it's still the strongest gust ever measured outside of a tornado or hurricane.

Do I have to follow a set tour?

No. Bearings isn't a fixed tour and doesn't give directions. Drive the Kancamagus in either direction, stop where you like, and it tells you about what you're passing.

Does it only work on the Kancamagus?

No. Bearings works anywhere you walk or drive, so the same app covers Franconia Notch, North Conway, or the drive home.

Is it free?

Free to start: two practice runs on a simulated drive, then 20 stories of the real thing. After that it's a Trip Pass or a membership.