From New Hampshire Public Radio, this is Outside In, a show about the natural world and how we use it.

I'm Sam Evans Brown.

P.T. Barnum wasn't exactly a humble guy. He called his famous Big Top Circus the greatest show on earth.

But a show like his doesn't just pop into existence. You have to build it. You've got to travel the world, assemble the freak show, buy the

elephants and lions, train the trainers, pay the clowns, and then pack all of that craziness

onto a train. But when he stood on top of Mount Washington, the tallest

mountain in the northeastern United States, it took his breath away. He called this simple peak, this barren summit, the second greatest

show on earth. But what he might not have realized is that this experience had been

carefully constructed just like his circus.

The wild untouched, uninterpreted, unmediated scenery is nothing. It's just wilderness.

Scenery has to be interpreted, has to be mediated, has to be made to make sense to people.

For this next piece, Outside In is taking you back in time.

To tell you how a group of pioneers turned one of the world's most inhospitable mountaintops

into a premier tourist destination.

And in so doing, did more than just build some roads and a couple of hotels, but helped construct the very way we experienced

natural landscapes and mountain vistas. Here to help me tell this story is producer Taylor Quimby.

P.T. Barnum didn't really know it when he stood on the summit, but Mount

Washington is sort of a meteorological freak show.

It sits squarely at the intersection of three major storm tracks in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

At less than 6,300 feet, it's barely a hill compared to peaks in the Rockies, the Alps, and yet, Mount

Washington is routinely placed alongside Everest and K2 as one of the deadliest in the world.

In the winter, the climate is Arctic, literally.

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