A Bright Idea

By Meghan McCarthy McPhaul———Excerpted from : A History of Cannon Mountain: Trails, Tales and Skiing Legends A must have for every skiers library…. Purchase here

A series of serendipitous events through the 1930s contributed to Franconia's rise as a ski center: the ski school at Peckett's, construction of the Taft Trail, and the Hochgebirgers and their introduction of racing to the local ski scene. But it was the 1938 opening of the first passenger aerial tramway in North America that cemented Cannon's place at the summit of American skiing and launched the mountain's development as a modern ski area.

The idea of building an aerial tramway in New Hampshire was introduced in 1933 by Alec Bright and was intriguing enough to garner national attention. At the time, there were no means of uphill travel at ski slopes in the United States. The first rope tow would open in January 1934 in Woodstock, Vermont; the J-bar lift would not be introduced for two more years; and the chairlift, which became the favorite of ski areas everywhere, would not make its world debut until 1936 in Sun Valley, and not in the East until 1937, at the Belknap Recreation Area in New Hampshire. The thrill of a mountain descent in the early 1930s came only after a strenuous climb.

Aerial tramways were newly popular at European ski areas and had long been used in the western United States for mining operations. An early version of the gondola (sometimes referred to as a "tramway") had even carried sightseers to Sunrise Peak in Silver Plume, Colorado, from 1907 until 1914. But passenger lifts at ski areas were a novel concept when Bright, speaking for the Ski Club Hochgebirge, presented the tramway idea during a December 1933 meeting of the New England Council.

"Aerial cableways... may be the next and most spectacular manifestation of the ski craze which is sweeping over New England," read a report of that meeting in the Boston Evening Transcript. The article, as did many subsequent reports appearing in newspapers throughout New England and beyond, noted the popularity and success of tramways in Europe and hypothesized that aerial tramways could turn New England into the"Switzerland of America.”

Bright made several arguments in support of building a tramway in New Hampshire: greater access to the sport for novice skiers, more time devoted to sking downhill than to trudging uphill, reduced congestion on slopes carrying both upward- and downward-bound skiers, and enabling New England to lay claim as a major ski center. "With a tramway the slopes of Cannon will be alive with skiers," Bright wrote in 1934. "An aerial tramway completed on Cannon Mountain the first in the United States... would quickly herald from California to Florida in convincing terms the certainty and availability of winter sports and the guaranteed snow conditions in New England's mountains.

In the midst of the Great Depression, it was critical that the tramway be portrayed as a profitable venture for the state. So while it was skiers who introduced the concept, it was the potential appeal to warmer-weather vista seekers the numerous visitors to Franconia Notch each summer and fall-that sold the aerial tramway concept. In May 1934, New Hampshire governor John Winant appointed a commission to study the feasibility of erecting an aerial tramway in the state. Manchester attorney John Carleton was named chairman of the committee, which also included Alec Bright.

During the summer of 1934, the commission collaborated with the Worcester, Massachusetts-based American Steel & Wire Company to survey twenty-one potential tramway sites. American Steel & Wire, the American representative of European tramway company Bleichert-Zuegg, was a "pioneer in tramway construction," operating hundreds of freight trams in North and South America. Beginning in the late 1930s, American Steel & Wire would also build many of the earliest chairlifts at American ski areas.

The survey of New Hampshire mountains included such varied peaks as solitary Mount Manadnock in the south and lofty Mount Washington to the north. It included four potential locations in Franconia Notch: Cannon, Mount Liberty and two routes on Mount Lafayette. Cannon and Mount Moosilauke, just southwest of Franconia Notch, emerged as early and clear favorites and were presented as such when Carleton's committee reported to the state in August 1934.

Both mountains offered good snow cover: Moosilauke, long a favorite of Dartmouth Outing Club (DOC) skiers, offered a vertical descent of 2,470 feet. Cannon's descent of 1,320 feet was considerably shorter, but it was along a well-traveled route. While some sixteen hundred people passed along the Lost River Road access point to Moosilauke throughout the summer and fall, an estimated two million visitors traveled through Franconia Notch each year. Cannon was also close to the highway and to a source of electric power, and the proposed location would be obscured from the scenic road through the Notch." Bright, who authored the 1934 survey report, clearly favored building the tramway on Cannon Mountain. In September, when some members of the Dartmouth Outing Club opposed the idea of building a tramway on Mount Moosilauke, the DOC removed its support for the venture on its home mountain, and Cannon was left as the sole contender for the project.

Among the earliest proponents for a Cannon Tramway was Roland Peabody, who had undoubtedly run into Bright at Peckett's and other local skiing haunts. Born and raised in Franconia, Peabody was a skier and the proprietor of the local grocery store and hardware store. His knowledge of the area and his support of Bright's idea were crucial in seeing the Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway project to fruition. Peabody helped nudge the idea through the state legislature and became the first manager of the tramway.

In 1935, the New Hampshire state legislature approved a bill to create a five-member Tramway Commission to construct and operate an aerial tramway. The commission, again headed by Carleton, was authorized to accept federal grants with its sights set on Public Works Administration funds and other means of financing the $200,000 project. Federal funding didn't materialize, however, and the tramway venture was put on hold. Bright, Peabody and other supporters persevered, and in June 1937, the legislature passed a new bill authorizing $250,000 in state funding to build the Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway.

Former state executive councilor James MacLeod of Littleton was appointed chairman of a new Tramway Commission. It hired Roland Peabody as the first managing director of the tramway, a role he would maintain until his death in 1950, ably leading Cannon through its first years as a ski area. Peabody set up an office in the Iron Mine Tavern in Franconia, and the work to build the tramway began nearly immediately, continuing through the winter, when snow squalls, gusty winds and icy temperatures are the norm in Franconia Notch. As work progressed, the tramway project was noted as a marvel in both engineering and skiing in newspapers around New Hampshire, in Boston and New York and in publications as far afield as Oregon and Illinois.

The project included altering the route of the highway through the Notch, constructing parking areas and a highway underpass for skiers to access the Valley Station and building new ski trails. In August, a day after winning the contract for erecting the tramway with a bid of $191,974.99,53 American Steel & Wire began survey work on the proposed tramway line. Clearing for the Valley Station to be located near the site of the former Profile House was complete by the end of August, as was the relocation of the highway and authorization to bring a crew of some two hundred Civilian Conservation Corps men to nearby North Woodstock to build a parking area, construct an observation platform at Cannon's summit and cut new foot and ski trails.

Teams of men carried cement, cable and other materials up the mountain, traversing dense undergrowth, mud and huge boulders to construct a freight tram. This tram hauled workers, supplies and steel to construct the tramway's three towers. During the winter, the construction crew poured thirty-two carloads of cement and assembled 232 tons of steel and four miles of cable by hand. In March 1938, two reels of steel cable, each weighing some 30 tons, were shipped via train from Trenton, New Jersey, to Lincoln, New Hampshire, and transported through the Notch by truck to the base of the tramway site. The steel for the three tramway towers arrived by the same route.

Throughout the spring, the towers standing 115 feet, 94 feet and 88 feet tall were erected and painted to blend in with the scenery, the 5,410 feet of cable was run, and the Valley and Mountain stations were completed. The Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway, five years after the discussion began and nine months after ground was broken on the project, was slated to open in May, but inclement mountain weather delayed the opening date twice, moving it ultimately to June 28, 1938.

Some one hundred newspaper and newsreel reporters and photographers had been treated to a preview of the tramway on June 20, complete with a tour of the summit by Roland Peabody's mountain guides. The guides wore "natty blue uniforms and hats" and pointed out the myriad peaks visible from the top of Cannon, where the view on a clear day stretches into Vermont, Maine and Canada. Photographers "climbed all over the place," reported the Littleton Courier on June 23, trying to get the best angle to showcase "just what New Hampshire has in the way of a new thrill," Miss New Hampshire 1938, Lorraine Ledoux of Littleton, was photographed leaning from a tramcar window and waving to the camera.

At a time when few Americans had been suspended in the air in any form-airplane, chairlift, hot-air balloon the tramway must have seemed thrilling indeed. Many of its first passengers had probably never been to the top of a mountain, and so it was not only the ride that was fascinating but also the bird's-eye view from the summit. "The sensation of passing up over the rough forest terrain of the mountainside could be had in nothing short of an airplane ride," wrote one reporter: "The panorama was spread out, a sight before available only to those individuals hardy enough to climb on foot to the top of Cannon." With the hubbub surrounding the Cannon Tramway, it was hardly surprising that a crowd of more than 700 flocked to the opening. Some 350 of those were invited guests state officials, governors from other New England states, Tramway Commission members and representatives from American Steel & Wire. New Hampshire's first lady, with water from Echo Lake at the base of Cannon Mountain, christened the tramcars named Lafayette and Lincoln after nearby peaks. Governor Francis Murphy lauded the accomplishment of opening the country's first aerial passenger tramway:

It is a spectacular but perfectly practical public venture which. has had measurable good effect upon the public spirit...In a little more than five minutes time on the tramway you will have made an ascent which it takes a trained athlete an hour and a half to make over the trail afoot. I he tramway has thus removed the handicaps of age and health, and has made the mountain top accessible to all.

The Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway was an instant success. More than 100,000 people rode the tram in its first summer of operation, with another 37,000 climbing onboard during the winter of 1938-39?' Within a week of its opening, the tram carried its first wedding party, Hilda Blodget of Littleton and Arthur Blaney of Bethlehem, who wed at Cannon' summit during a July 4 weekend that saw some 2,600 others enjoy the tram, despite poor weather?" Popular radio commentator and ski enthusiast Lowell Thomas was among the tramway's visitors that first winter, making a live Broadcast from the Mountain Station in January 1939.

The tram rose 2,022 vertical feet from Valley Station to Mountain Station. Each twelve-sided tramcar was suspended by a wheeled carriage from a single traction cable. As one car left the Valley Station, the other would begin its descent from the Mountain Station, pulled by another cable operated by a one-hundred-horse-power engine. Early brochures for the tram made note of the lift's safety and the hand and foot controls used by the operator at the Valley Station to slow, stop and accelerate the cars. The conductor inside each tramcar communicated with the operator through push buttons and telephone. Edgar Herbert was among the first operators, and "he could tell just [by] the vibration if there was anything going on up there. He'd stop that thing before the guys could push the button.”

Each morning, an aerial lift mechanic would ride on top of the first tramcar up the mountain, stopping at each tower to chip ice off the cable wheels.* (Lift mechanics still take this early morning ride, but the tramcars are considerably larger.) On windy days, "lunch box" weights were distributed around the inside of each tramcar to decrease sway, and the operator would slow the cars as they approached the towers so the conductors in each car could open the doors and push off the towers with their feet?" The original tramcars also hung lower to the ground approaching the Mountain Station than today's tramway. After a big snowstorm, crews of men would ride the tram as far up the mountain as the snowdrifts allowed and then jump out and shovel a path for the tramcar to continue its ascent.

Skiers finding their way up the tram during its first winter of operation had few options for descending. Taft Slalom would carry them to the Taft Racecourse, Coppermine and Tucker Brook Trails over the saddle, ending a considerable distance from the tram's Valley Station. Or they could ride the sweeping corners of the new Cannon Mountain Trail and cut back to the base of the tram. A single ride to the top cost sixty cents, and skiers could purchase ten rides for five dollars."

Aerial tramways were considered one of the safest forms of transportation when the Cannon Tramway began operation, and in its seventy-plus years, there has been only one major mishap. On March 12, 1963, twenty-yeal-old tram operator Ronald Broderick of Franconia was returning to the Valley Station in the Lincoln car after transporting ski patrollers and other mountain staff to the summit on a routine early morning run when a rogue gust of wind lifted the car oft the tram cable. The car plunged ninety feet to the ground. It took nearly two hours for rescuers to navigate the boulder-strewn tramline and carry Broderick to the Valley Station. He suffered a fractured skull, a broken arm and a broken leg." The ensuing investigation revealed that a "cyclonic blast of wind" was to blame for the fluke accident," and while the tram remained closed until summer, it resumed operation and continued without further incident until its retirement in 1980, when Tram Il was installed. Broderick recovered and continued to work at the mountain for decades after his frightening fall.

The fallen tramcar was deemed beyond repair, and the state retained Colorado-based Heron Engineering Company to build a new tramcar. During the 1960s, the tramcars were painted red and white. One of the three original tramcars is in storage at Cannon Mountain. The other two rest within miles of the Valley Station: one at the entrance of the New England Ski Museum near the base of the tramway, the other at local tourist attraction Clark's Trading Post in Lincoln.

By the 1970s, it was clear that what was once a sensation in the skiing world had become antiquated, and in 1978, work began on the construction of a new aerial tramway at Cannon Mountain. Tram II, dedicated in May 1980, is faster four minutes, forty-two seconds from valley to summit and bigger, with an eighty-person capacity for each tramcar. Its hourly passenger volume, at 1,540 (770 each direction), is three times the original tram, and its shiny red and yellow cars nicknamed Ketchup and Mustard are brighter and more modern.

Construction of the new tramway did not require such a massive amount of manpower as had the original. The old tram was used to transport materials, and helicopters airlifted the bulkiest pieces required for construction. The Italian company Nuova Agudio installed Tram II at a cost of $4.6 million" On May 24, 1980, a crowd of nearly five thousand attended the dedication of the new tramway. This included eight hundred invited guests, among them Damus Champagne, one of Cannon's earliest aerial tramway mechanics, and former New Hampshire governors Sherman Adams and Hugh Gregg.

The original Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway carried 6,581,338 passengers in its forty-two years.3 Tram II carried roughly the same number in its first three decades. More than seventy-five years after Alec Bright made his tramway proposal, the Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway remains a popular man-made complement to the natural wonders that have drawn visitors to Franconia Notch for more than two centuries. And while the novelty of such a lift has faded with time and experience, a ride up the tram in any season remains a thrill of dizzying heights and magnificent vistas.