Watertown-built Car Climbs Mt. Washington
On this day in 1899, Newton inventor F.O. Stanley took his wife Flora for a drive — into the record books. Leaving home in a steam-powered Locomobile, built in the Stanley brothers' Watertown shop, the couple motored to New Hampshire and then drove up Mt. Washington — the first time an auto reached the summit of New England's highest peak. The feat was a public relations coup for the Bay State's nascent auto industry. Massachusetts men were making cars that broke speed records, traveling at an astounding — and to some, alarming — speed of 27 miles an hour, and pioneering new technologies. The Midwest would soon become the center of the American auto industry, but it was in Massachusetts that the nation's first gasoline-powered automobiles were produced.
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