PEOPLE OF THE WHITES: Winston Henry Pote (1899-1989) – by Francis Woodard Richardson
Over the past several years Frances Woodard Richardson has profiled many New Hampshirites who have contributed to the development of outdoor life in New Hampshire. Mountain Passages has published these profiles in a Series called ‘PEOPLE OF THE WHITES.’ Her other portrayals include Samuel Americanus Bemis (1793-1881), Florence Morey (1886-1978), Bradley Washburn (1910-2007), Lizzie Bourne (1833-1855), Franklin Leavitt (1824-1898), Guy Leslie Shorey (1881-1961), Rodney Dallas Woodard (1905-1976) and Stuart Kimball Harris (1906-1969). Frances’ bios of Louis Fayerweather Cutter (1864-1945), Laban Merril Watson (1850-1936) and Leroy Reynolds Woodard (1903-1985) can be found in the Mountain Passages Archives.
Winston, the son of Henry Joseph Pote, 34, and Beatrice Amelia Wells, 22, was born on June 26, 1899, in Lynn, Mass.
Pote worked as a pharmacist in Swampscott, Mass. His interest in photography began in 1923 when he took a five-day excursion to Lincoln, N.H., given by Green Tours of Lynn and Boston, Mass. He took his Graflex camera to photograph Mount Washington. Later, he became the official photographer for Green Tours.
Winston returned to the mountains to take photographs of skiers. With Brad Washburn, Pote climbed Tuckerman’s Ravine headwall to photograph Charlie Proctor, the only American on the 1928 Olympic Team.
On June 20, 1929, Winston was at the Bretton Woods Base Station for Old Peppersass’ final climb up Mount Washington on the Cog Railway. He boarded the engine illegally to photograph the occasion. When Peppersass lost one of the wheel gears and raced down the track, Winston, carrying his camera to get one of the last shots, had to jump from the engine. He landed on a jagged rock and broke his jaw and other injuries. He spent time in the hospital.
After serving in the Military in 1942, he returned to Mount Washington to make movies and aerial images of the mountain. Pote published a book in 1985, MOUNT WASHINGTON IN WINTER, Photographs and Recollections, 1923 – 1940.
In the winter of 1931, he and his friend, Joseph Oliver, and his dog, Rex, of Lynn, Mass., spent two months in Camden Cottage on the summit of Mount Washington. Camden Cottage was built in 1922 to shelter winter hikers at the request of Patrick Camden, a veteran roadmaster on the Cog Railway. Winston and Joseph’s mission was to photograph the changing conditions from Winter to Spring on the mountain.
Pote took pictures of the first American Inferno Race on April 16, 1933. It was a risky ski race over the headwall of Tuckerman’s Ravine.
Winston Pote married Marion Louise Boothman on November 12, 1942, in Gorham, NH. He died in Lancaster, NH, on January 5, 1989, at the age of 89.
REFERENCES:
- MOUNT WASHINGTON IN WINTER, by Winston Pote
- THE STORY OF MOUNT WASHINGTON, by F. Allen Burt
- MOUNT WASHINGTON REOCCUPIED by Robert S. Monahan
- WINSTON POTE PHOTOGRAPHER and EPHEMERA Collection, by Winston Pote