Qualla: Old Man of the Mountain

Old Man of the Mountain: Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit P199, CC BY-SA 3.0. Daniel Webster put it best: 'Up in the Mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.' The sign he meant was a jagged arrangement of five granite cliff ledges on Cannon Mountain in Franconia Notch that, viewed from the north, resolved into the unmistakable profile of a human face. The Abenaki called it Stone Face. Nathaniel Hawthorne called it the Great Stone Face. New Hampshire put it on license plates, road signs, and eventually the state quarter -- popularly promoted as the only U.S. coin with a profile on both sides. For nearly two centuries, this accidental sculpture of ice and erosion stared out across Profile Lake, the most famous face in New England. Then, between midnight and 2 a.m. on May 3, 2003, it was gone.

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Image: P199 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Old Man of the Mountain: Carved by Ice, Claimed by Legend

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Franconia Notch is a U-shaped valley gouged by glaciers during the Wisconsin glaciation, the most recent ice age to bury New England under miles of ice. As the glaciers retreated roughly 12,000 years ago, cycles of freezing and thawing cracked the granite bedrock of Cannon Mounta...

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Image: Public domain

Old Man of the Mountain: A Face That Built an Identity

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Francis Whitcomb and Luke Brooks, surveyors working Franconia Notch in 1805, became the first white settlers to record the formation. But it was Daniel Webster's writings in the early 1800s that spread the Old Man's fame across the nation. Nathaniel Hawthorne visited in 1832 and ...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Old Man of the Mountain: Chains, Cement, and a Losing Battle

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit IbentCollieleyr, CC BY-SA 4.0. The same freeze-thaw cycles that created the Old Man were slowly destroying it. By the 1920s, fissures in the formation's 'forehead' had widened enough that workers mended them with chains. In 1957, the state legislature appropriated $25,000 for a more ambitious intervention: 20 ...

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Image: IbentCollieleyr | CC BY-SA 4.0

Old Man of the Mountain: The Night the Profile Fell

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NPS Staff, Public domain. Nobody witnessed the collapse. Sometime between midnight and 2 a.m. on May 3, 2003, the five ledges that composed the Old Man slid from Cannon Mountain's cliff face and tumbled to the talus slopes below. The news traveled across the state like a death in the family. Hundreds gath...

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Image: NPS Staff | Public domain

Old Man of the Mountain: The Ghost on Every Plate

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rob Gallagher, Public domain. The Old Man is everywhere in New Hampshire and nowhere on Cannon Mountain. The profile still appears on every state license plate, on highway signs, and in the state emblem. It remains the most potent symbol of the Granite State's identity, perhaps more powerful in absence than i...

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Image: Rob Gallagher | Public domain