The Old Man of the Mountain
The Old Man of the Mountain, also known as the Big Stone Face, was actually just a piece of granite that, when viewed from the appropriate angle, resembled a human profile. Yet, since enough people could see the profile, it eventually became a landmark. Humans enjoy spotting patterns and recognizable features in things.
The granite cliffs were on Cannon Mountain, which is a portion of Franconia Notch State Park in New Hampshire. The 40-foot-tall imposing face had importance for the local native tribes. It was known as Stone Face by the Abenaki. Legend has it that a man by the name of Nis Kizos once waited on a mountain for his beloved to come back after she had gone to her town to attend to a sickness.
Every day he searched for her on the mountain, but she never showed up. The brother of Nis Kizos climbed up the mountain to break the heartbreaking news that she had passed away in her hamlet. He discovered that his brother was no longer there and that his face was now permanently protruding from the mountain, surveying the landscape.
The elderly guy vanished in 2003 after actually gazing into space for a very long time. Years of freezing and thawing had damaged the stone until it could no longer withstand the extreme temperature changes. When chains were attached to hold it together in the 1920s, attempts to fix it have been made. The government invested $25,000 in a repair attempt in the 1950s to preserve it using cement and other materials, but it was obvious that this was only a temporary fix.
