Eastern Slopes Regional

The highest peak in the northeastern United States at 6,288 feet — and home to what the observatory itself markets as "the world's worst weather." Hurricane-force winds (74+ mph) occur more than 100 days per year. On April 12, 1934, observatory staff recorded a 231-mph wind gust at the summit — the world record for surface wind speed for 62 years, until Tropical Cyclone Olivia hit Barrow Island, Australia in 1996. The 1934 record is still the U.S. surface wind record. The mountain's weather is so extreme because it sits at the convergence of three major storm tracks, has prevailing westerly winds traveling unobstructed for hundreds of miles, and creates an upslope-acceleration "venturi effect" through its peaked summit. The Mount Washington Cog Railway, opened July 3, 1869, was the first mountain-climbing cog railway in the world — still operating today with a mix of steam and biodiesel engines, climbing 3.1 miles at grades up to 37 percent. The summit hosts a year-round nonprofit weather observatory founded in 1932, whose climate dataset informs National Weather Service forecasting models for the entire Northeast.

On Seavey's Island in the Piscataqua River between Kittery, Maine and Portsmouth, New Hampshire — the oldest continuously operating shipyard in the U.S. Navy, established by President John Adams on June 12, 1800. The 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth ending the Russo-Japanese War was negotiated and signed here, earning Theodore Roosevelt the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize. The shipyard built submarines from World War I onward — over 130 boats including USS Albacore (AGSS-569, 1953), the first all-welded teardrop-hull submarine that revolutionized post-war submarine design (now preserved as a museum at the foot of Goosebay Boulevard in Portsmouth). The yard built USS Thresher (1961), tragically lost with all hands during a 1963 deep-dive test 220 miles off Boston. Today the shipyard overhauls and refuels nuclear-powered fast-attack subs (Los Angeles and Virginia class) — the only naval shipyard certified for the work in the northeast. The base is closed to public access except by invitation, but Albacore Park in Portsmouth is open to visitors.

A small Ivy League college on the Vermont border in Hanover, New Hampshire — founded 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock under a royal charter from King George III, originally intended to educate Native American boys (very few attended; the school quickly pivoted to colonial English students). The ninth-oldest U.S. institution of higher education, the smallest in the Ivy League (about 4,500 undergraduates). The Dartmouth Green — a 7-acre quadrangle bordered by the historic Baker-Berry Library, Dartmouth Hall (1791 original, reconstructed 1906 and again 1935), and the Hopkins Center for the Arts — is the geographic and ceremonial center of the campus and town simultaneously. Daniel Webster (Class of 1801) defended the college's independence before the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), establishing the contract-clause protection for private corporations against state interference — one of the most important cases in U.S. constitutional history. Other Dartmouth alumni: poet Robert Frost (briefly, 1892, before transferring), surgeon C. Everett Koop, Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and journalist Mindy Kaling. The Hood Museum of Art holds one of the oldest college-museum collections in the U.S.

On the east side of Manchester-Boston Regional Airport, in a curvy white Streamline Moderne building that does not match anything else around it, is the Aviation Museum of New Hampshire. The building itself is the exhibit's center of gravity. It is the 1937 terminal of Grenier Field — built by the Works Progress Administration at a total cost of $549,758, replacing a 1931 brick shack, and serving as the airport's main passenger terminal through the years when Glenn Miller's USO C-47 flew through here, when Grenier Field ferried 9,000 B-17s and B-24s to Europe, and into the early Cold War. The building was retired in 1961 when the new Ammon Terminal opened. It served as the general aviation building for another thirty-four years. In 1995, with the major expansion underway, it was slated for demolition. The New Hampshire Aviation Historical Society, the City of Manchester, the FAA, and the Town of Londonderry agreed to save it instead. The society raised $1.1 million. In 2004, the building was lifted onto a transport rig and moved across two active runways in the middle of the night — runway 6-24 was closed for one hour for the first crossing, then runway 17-35 closed for an hour for the second. By dawn the building was sitting at its new address at 27 Navigator Road on the east side of the field. It opened as a museum in 2005. The Slusser Aviation Learning Center, a hangar-shaped wing built behind the original structure in 2011 with a million-dollar gift from Eugene and Ann Slusser, doubled the museum's size. Inside: New Hampshire's aviation history from the air mail era — including 2nd Lt. Jean Donat Grenier himself — through Grenier Field's North Atlantic ferry mission, Pease Air Force Base, and the modern Manchester airport. The museum's parking lot is the closest the public can get to active Runway 17-35. It is free, open to 8 p.m. daily, and arguably the best airliner-watching spot in northern New England.