The Old Man of the Mountain

Five granite ledges stacked on a cliff in Franconia Notch lined up, from exactly one angle, into the profile of a man forty feet tall. Daniel Webster wrote about it, New Hampshire put it on the state quarter and every road sign, and it held on with cables and epoxy for decades. On 3 May 2003 it let go and fell. The state grieved it properly. At the Profile Plaza on the lakeshore there are now steel rods you sight along to raise the face back onto the empty cliff, which is a strange and moving thing to do in person.