Franconia Notch: The Old Man Who Fell
Near Mount Washington Valley, New Hampshire
Franconia Notch is a glacial pass through the White Mountains, carved twelve thousand years ago when the last ice sheet retreated. For nearly two centuries its most famous feature was the Old Man of the Mountain: five ledges of Conway Granite stacked on the face of Cannon Cliff that, viewed from just the right angle, formed a startlingly human profile.
Two surveyors officially recorded the formation in eighteen oh five. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a story inspired by it. The state adopted it as its official emblem in nineteen forty-five. Then, in the early hours of May third, two thousand three, on a wet, windy night, the entire face broke free and collapsed. The chin block had been cantilevering the whole structure with only twenty centimeters of clearance from the tipping point. New Hampshire still puts the Old Man on its road signs, remembering the face that watched over this notch for millennia.
