There are not many states whose official emblem is a rock formation that no longer exists, and that is exactly the point. As NHPR’s Folk Show notes, May 3 marked the 23rd anniversary of the night the “Great Stone Face” — the Old Man of the Mountain — broke loose from the side of Cannon Cliff in Franconia Notch and tumbled into the talus below. The Folk Show used its weekend slot to play the songs that have grown up around the granite profile, before and after its fall.

For a state symbol that has been physically gone for more than two decades, the Old Man’s hold on New Hampshire’s identity has barely loosened. The Folk Show’s tribute is a small, deliberate version of a much larger pattern: every spring, around May 3, Granite Staters revisit the rock that used to look back from the cliff.

What Fell, And When

The Old Man of the Mountain was a series of five granite ledges on Cannon Mountain that, viewed from the right angle on Profile Lake, formed the unmistakable craggy profile of an elderly man in profile — chin, nose, brow, and forehead. Daniel Webster’s often-quoted line about the formation — that God hung out a sign in New Hampshire to show that here, He makes men — captured how the rock had functioned for generations. It was a totem, not just a tourist stop.

The state had known for decades that the formation was unstable. Engineers stabilized the ledges with cables and turnbuckles in the 20th century, and a small army of volunteers, including the legendary “caretaker” Niels Nielsen and his son David, had been monitoring the cracks for years. None of that prevented the inevitable. Sometime overnight on May 2 into May 3, 2003, the granite released. By dawn, hikers and Department of Transportation crews looking up at Cannon Cliff saw fog where the face had been. The fog cleared. The face did not come back.

Why The Music Keeps Coming

Folk music in New Hampshire and the broader Northeast has a long habit of treating physical landscape as a character. The White Mountains, Mount Washington, the Connecticut River, and the Old Man have all collected song catalogs over the years, sung in church basements, contra dance halls, and small radio studios long before they reached anything like a wider audience.

The Old Man’s catalog grew sharply after 2003. A formation that had inspired a steady trickle of poems and songs while it stood became, in falling, a different kind of subject — a way for songwriters to talk about loss, permanence, and what a state owes its symbols. Some of the songs are mourning songs. Some are wry. A few, written by Granite Staters who grew up looking up at Cannon Cliff on family drives north, are closer to memoir than commentary.

The Folk Show, which has occupied a steady weekend slot on New Hampshire Public Radio for decades, has been a quiet keeper of that catalog. Hosts have long made a point of programming Old Man material around the anniversary — sometimes the obvious selections, sometimes deeper cuts from regional songwriters whose work would not otherwise reach a statewide audience. This year’s tribute is part of that practice.

For listeners who care about how New Hampshire sees itself, that programming choice is a small but real piece of cultural infrastructure. It is also of a piece with the Folk Show’s other recent in-studio work, including the Kruger Brothers performance NHPR hosted earlier this season.

What Replaced The Face

The state did not try to rebuild the rock. Instead, the Old Man of the Mountain Memorial in Franconia Notch State Park uses a series of steel “profilers” — uprights with cutout silhouettes — that, viewed from a marked spot on the lakeshore, recreate the original profile against the empty cliff. It is a thoughtful, restrained piece of memorial design. Walk past it on the wrong line and the silhouettes look like abstract sculpture. Stand on the marked spot and the face appears, in negative, exactly where it used to be.

That same instinct — the refusal to fake the rock back into existence, paired with the determination to keep the image alive in some form — is also what the Folk Show is doing with its anniversary playlist. The cliff is empty. The songs are not.

The profile is on the state quarter, on the highway signs, on the route markers at Franconia Notch, and on a thousand pieces of small-business iconography statewide, much like other granite-state landmarks featured in our look at Mount Washington’s UNESCO World Heritage push. The face is everywhere except the cliff. May 3 is the day every year when New Hampshire is reminded of the difference.

Frequently Asked Questions

For related coverage, see our reporting on How New Hampshire’s Heritage Trail Is Reframing the 250th.

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When did the Old Man of the Mountain fall?

The Old Man of the Mountain fell from Cannon Cliff in Franconia Notch sometime overnight between May 2 and May 3, 2003. The collapse was discovered the morning of May 3 by hikers and Department of Transportation crews. The 23rd anniversary fell on May 3, 2026.

Can you still see the Old Man profile in Franconia Notch?

Not as a rock formation. The state built the Old Man of the Mountain Memorial in Franconia Notch State Park, which uses steel “profiler” sculptures along the shore of Profile Lake. When viewed from a marked spot, the cutouts line up to recreate the original silhouette against the cliff face where the formation once stood.

Why does NHPR's Folk Show observe the anniversary?

The Folk Show has, for years, programmed music written about the Old Man of the Mountain around the May 3 anniversary. The catalog of regional songs about the formation grew significantly after the 2003 collapse, and the show treats that body of work as part of New Hampshire’s living cultural record.