Reading accompanying narratives about the photograph also provides some clues that support my hypothesis. The UFO photograph is actually a stereoscopic image—one of two photographs aligned on a card to form a 3-D effect, akin to the modern Viewmaster. According to information at the UFO Evidence website (via UFO artwork), the photo’s description reads, "SUMMIT Mt. Washington WINTER 1870-1871 Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1871, by CLOGH & KIMBALL, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington."
That the image actually has a title with no reference to the object may be important. Surely, if the object was a mystery at the time of taking or processing the photographs, a tag of ‘mystery airship’ or similar title would have accompanied it, since the great flap of 1897 had been merely three years prior, and was very widely known and documented. The lack of any descriptive title says a lot.
Further, stereoscopic images were made and sold in sets. There were many that were a kind of travelogue, documenting particular areas and events of interest, natural disasters, and anything considered important or newsworthy. For example, I have a set of stereoscopic images from the 1907 San Francisco earthquake. Together, the images tell a story, and were meant to be viewed in context with one another. Some of the photos are rather mundane, random and peripheral, while others are profound, poignant, and astounding.
Certainly, there are other images from this Mt.Washington set. Although I cannot confirm their same-set status, I have found other same-era stereoscopic images of Mt. Washington for sale on eBay. My guess is that when viewed as intended in context with the rest of the set, the mystery object is either clearly recognizable, or its identity is logically deduced.
But what in the world could this object embedded in the snow be? I thought it looked somewhat like a train, tipped on its side, with its underbelly exposed. But a train on the side of a mountain? I figured if I could prove that Mt. Washington sported a train track around the same time this photo was taken, I would be onto something. Within two seconds of doing a yahoo search, I felt I had struck gold.
The world’s first mountain-climbing cog railway was built on Mt. Washington in 1869, just one year before the photograph was taken. The train goes clear to the summit, so it is possible the object, even being as high as it would seem in the photograph, could be the train, or train cars.
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