It happened in the middle of the night. May 3, 2003. A Saturday. While the rest of New Hampshire was sleeping, the most famous face in the granite state—maybe in the whole country—just... slipped.
Imagine waking up and a literal mountain has changed. People actually cried. I’m not being dramatic; they held vigils. They left flowers at the base of Cannon Mountain. It sounds wild if you aren’t from around there, but the Old Man of the Mountain wasn’t just a pile of rocks. It was an identity. It’s still on the back of the state quarter, the road signs, and the license plates, even though the actual profile has been a pile of rubble for over two decades.
Why did it fall? Honestly, gravity is a jerk. But it was also water, ice, and a whole lot of bad luck. For centuries, five massive granite ledges perched precariously 1,200 feet above Profile Lake. From just the right angle, they looked like the stern, craggy face of an old man looking out over the Franconia Notch. To the Abenaki people, it was a sacred representation of an ancestor. To 19th-century tourists, it was a Romantic marvel. To modern engineers, it was a nightmare they tried to hold together with turnbuckles and epoxy for 50 years.
The Geologic "Miracle" That Shouldn't Have Existed
If you look at the physics of it, the Old Man of the Mountain should have fallen a thousand years ago. It didn't make sense.
The profile was roughly 40 feet tall and 25 feet wide. It was formed by the retreat of glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age, somewhere around 12,000 years ago. As the ice pulled back, it plucked at the cliffs of Cannon Mountain, leaving behind these specific slabs of Conway granite.
The "chin" was the problem. It was a 100-ton block of granite hanging out over thin air.
Why the Profile actually looked like a face
It wasn't a solid carving. It was an optical illusion created by five separate ledges:
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- One ledge formed the forehead.
- Another made the nose.
- Two ledges combined to create the upper and lower lips.
- One final, terrifyingly heavy slab formed the chin.
If you stood anywhere else in the Notch, it just looked like a messy cliffside. You had to be in a very specific spot on the ground to see the "Great Stone Face" that Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about in 1850. He described it as "a work of Nature in her mood of majestic playfulness." That "playfulness" was actually a precarious balancing act.
The Decades of Desperate Maintenance
People knew it was failing. By the 1920s, cracks were showing. In 1916, Edward H. Richter noticed the forehead was slipping.
Enter the Nielsen family. This is one of those cool, local legacies you don't hear about much outside of New England. For decades, Niels Nielsen—and later his son David—were the "Keepers of the Old Man." They would climb up that mountain every year to patch cracks with epoxy and tighten steel turnbuckles. They were basically performing surgery on a mountain.
They used tons of sealing compounds to keep water out. Why? Because of the "freeze-thaw cycle." This is the real villain of the story. Water gets into a crack, freezes, expands, and pushes the rock apart. In the White Mountains, this happens hundreds of times a year.
By the late 1950s, the state was getting serious. They installed massive steel tie-rods to anchor the chin to the main cliff. They literally bolted the face to the mountain. For a long time, it worked. But you can't fight geology forever. The granite was "rotten"—weathered and crumbling from the inside out.
The Night the Profile Vanished
The spring of 2003 was brutal. Lots of rain, lots of temperature swings.
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On May 3, a thick fog rolled into Franconia Notch. When the clouds lifted around 7:30 AM, the Old Man was gone. Just... gone. There was no thunderous roar that anyone reported. No earthquake. Just a quiet surrender to gravity.
State park rangers went up in a helicopter to see if anything could be saved. There was nothing. The chin had given way, and the rest of the face followed it down into the talus slope below. David Nielsen later said it felt like losing a member of the family. It sounds cheesy, but the state was in genuine mourning.
Could they have rebuilt it?
There was a huge debate about this. Some people wanted to glue it back together. Others wanted a fiberglass replica. Honestly, thank goodness they didn't.
A committee was formed, and the consensus was that a fake Old Man would be an insult to the original. The beauty of the Old Man of the Mountain was that it was natural. Once nature took it back, trying to "Disney-fy" the cliffside felt wrong. Instead, they built a memorial at the base of the mountain.
Seeing the "Ghost" of the Old Man Today
If you go to Franconia Notch State Park now, you can still see him. Sort of.
They built these things called "Profilers" at the Old Man of the Mountain Historic Site. They look like strange metal poles with jagged bits sticking out of them. If you stand at a specific height—there are different platforms for kids and adults—and look past the pole toward the cliff, the metal silhouette aligns with the mountain to show you exactly where the face used to be.
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It’s surprisingly moving. It’s like looking at a ghost.
Is it still worth visiting?
Absolutely. Even without the face, Franconia Notch is one of the most beautiful places in the United States.
- The Flume Gorge: A natural chasm with 90-foot granite walls.
- Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway: You can ride to the summit and see into Canada on a clear day.
- Echo Lake: A perfect alpine lake right at the foot of the cliffs.
What We Learned from the Fall
The disappearance of the Old Man changed how we look at "permanent" landmarks. Nothing is permanent. Not even a mountain.
It also highlighted the complexity of New Hampshire's geology. The White Mountains are old, but they are constantly being reshaped. The fall was a reminder that we are just witnesses to a very slow, very powerful process.
Experts like state geologist Wally Bothner spent years analyzing the debris. They found that the internal structure was far more compromised than the Nielsens ever realized. The tie-rods hadn't failed; the rock they were anchored to had simply turned to mush.
Actionable Steps for Your Visit
If you’re planning a trip to see the site of the Old Man of the Mountain, here is how to do it right:
- Check the Weather: Franconia Notch creates its own microclimate. It can be 70 degrees in Manchester and snowing at the Notch. Always bring a jacket, even in July.
- Use the "Profiler" Plaza: Don't just look at the cliff from the parking lot. Walk down to the lake and use the viewing stakes. It’s the only way to actually visualize the scale of what was lost.
- Hike the Hi-Cannon Trail: If you're an experienced hiker, this trail gives you a "sideways" look at the cliff face where the Old Man used to sit. It’s steep and rocky, but the perspective is incredible.
- Visit the Museum: The Franconia Notch State Park headquarters has a great exhibit on the history of the "Keepers of the Old Man." It’s worth 20 minutes of your time to see the tools they used to try and save him.
- Respect the Talus: Do not try to climb up to the "rubble pile" where the rocks landed. It’s incredibly unstable and dangerous. The best views are from the designated paths around Profile Lake.
The Old Man is gone, but the mountain remains. The Notch is still there. The wind still howls through the pass just like it did when the profile was watching over it. It’s a different kind of beauty now—a beauty of memory and the reminder that nature always gets the last word.
Stop by the memorial, stand on the footprints at the viewing station, and look up. You'll see the gap where he used to be, and somehow, that's just as powerful as the face itself.