2011
Associated Press, “NH's Mount Washington Auto Road celebrates 150 years.”
Establishes 1984 and age 73; quotes Barbara Weagle
Sources
Everything this site is standing on.
Thirteen sources, one of them paywalled as a PDF, several of them the same three reporters covering the same event for twenty years. That is the entire documentary record for Alton Weagle, and it is thinner than the story deserves.
The principal source
Dan Szczesny
Szczesny did the actual research. He spent time in Groveton and Stark chasing Weagle's family and background, wrote the chapter that put Weagle into circulation, then climbed the Auto Road himself as Walt Whitman in 2017.
“Mount Washington's Quirky Record Holder: A Writer Follows the Intensity of Alton Weagle,” Appalachia 69:1 (2018), article 3. Dartmouth Digital Commons, free PDF. And The White Mountain: Rediscovering Mount Washington's Hidden Culture (Hobblebush, 2018).
Disclosure
Several biographical details currently on the Alton page — the fire tower on Monadnock, the Keene Horseshoe Club, the fifty pints of blood, the square dance calling — almost certainly come from the Appalachia article, but were carried on this site unsourced and have not yet been checked against it line by line. Until that happens they are held back rather than published as fact.
Press and official
—
Mt. Washington Auto Road, official Alton Weagle Day page.
The canonical list of his ascents, and the event's own framing2014
Conway Daily Sun, on the fourth annual event.
Names the 2014 field; barefoot; every month of the year; 19842016
Union Leader, on Bigfoot, the Grinch and the wingnut cake.
Also the source of a 2001 founding date, which is a typo for 20112019
WhiteMountains.tv and the Conway Daily Sun, both on the 2019 field.
The single most useful year: eleven participants named individually2021
Union Leader, on the tenth running.
Stilted pizza, the rabbit named Alton, the 2020 gap2023
Union Leader, on the thirteenth running.
Darth Vader, the ping-pong ascent, the e-unicycle contingent2026
Rebecca Richard, Lewiston Sun Journal, on the record forty-six.
The 1955 Cog wedding; the watermelon wagon; the participant count2026
Miles Howard, “The minister of silly walks,” Mind the Moss.
The reported 2027 date, and the only pointer to Sean Hurley's 2013 NHPR feature—
The Auto Road's Flickr galleries, 2012 to 2024.
Twelve albums, no captions, no index. The largest untapped source here.Corrections log
Changes made to this site's own published claims, kept in public.
Aug 2026
Weagle's dates changed from 1911–1979 to 1911–1984.
Three independent sources against noneAug 2026
The wedding date 10 September 1955 reduced to the year alone.
The year holds; the day was never sourcedAug 2026
“Raced the Cog Railway on foot and won” regraded from a flat statement to claimed.
No source locatedAug 2026
The Auto Road given as 7.6 miles throughout, not eight.
Press coverage says eight; the operator's own figure is 7.6Aug 2026
Event countdown moved out of two conflicting hardcoded dates into a single file.
index.html said 2 May 2026, script.js said 23 May 2026, both staleOpen leads
Barbara Weagle, Groveton
Named in the 2011 AP story and credited on both surviving photographs. The only primary source in evidence, and the person to ask about image rights before anything is published.
Sean Hurley, NHPR, 2013
A radio feature on that year's event. Radio reporters name people, which makes it the most likely way to fill 2013 properly. Not yet located.
Twelve Flickr galleries
2012 through 2024, unindexed. Working through them with captions is how the register stops being a press summary and starts being a register.
The 2025 gap
The event ran every year from 2011 except 2020 and 2025. The reason for 2020 is obvious. No source explains 2025.