In 1869, New Hampshire opened a cog railway where normal trains could not climb; more than 150 years later, its toothed track still reaches Mount Washington’s 6,288-foot summit

In 1858, a New Hampshire businessman named Sylvester Marsh entered the New Hampshire legislature. He requested permission to lay track on the side of the tallest mountain in the northeast United States. According to ASCE, the lawmakers found it so absurd that, legend has it, they half-teasingly granted permission to extend the line all the way to the moon. On July 3, 1869, after building a grand railroad bridge, twelve years and one Civil War later, Marsh's train arrived at the 6,288-foot peak of Mount Washington.

It is still in operation today after 157 years, and is, to this day, the second-steepest rack railway on Earth and the first mountain-climbing cog railway ever built. It definitely sounds like a story that deserves more attention. This is a tale easy to overlook in an age of van-life reels and "hidden gem" listicles, amid the assumption that anything invented before smartphones couldn't have been that special. It was.