Whiteface Mountain Veterans Memorial Highway
— — the eight miles that climb out of the trees.
Not only on a wall.
“A toll road that lifts off the valley floor and keeps going. Eight miles of switchbacks out of Wilmington, ending at a stone castle parking lot just below the summit of Whiteface. From there an elevator cut into the rock finishes the climb. The light at the top is older than the road. Open mid-May through mid-October, and only when the weather agrees. from the studio
Whiteface Mountain Veterans Memorial Highway, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Veterans Memorial Highway climbs roughly eight miles from Wilmington, New York, up the eastern shoulder of Whiteface Mountain, the fifth-highest peak in the state at 4,867 feet. Construction began in 1929 and the road was dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in September 1935 as a memorial to the veterans of the First World War. It ends at the Castle, a stone shelter just below the summit, where a tunnel and elevator carved into the bedrock finish the ascent.
Above 4,000 feet the spruce-fir gives way to alpine krummholz and bare rock, and the wind reads ten or fifteen degrees colder than the valley. On a clear day the view from the summit reaches into Vermont, Quebec, and the long ridge of the Green Mountains. Cloud often sits on the upper third of the mountain by mid-morning in summer; the road is closed at the toll house when the wind at the top crosses safe limits.
The highway is operated by the Olympic Regional Development Authority and is open seasonally, typically from mid-May through mid-October, weather permitting. A per-vehicle toll is collected at the gate at the foot of the road in Wilmington. The drive to the Castle takes about twenty minutes one way. From the Castle, walkers can take a steep stone stairway to the summit, or use the tunnel and elevator built into the mountain in the 1930s.