Cannon Mountain – Franconia Notch, New Hampshire

Cannon Mountain (formerly Profile Mountain) is a 4,080-foot peak in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Known for both its technical rock and ice climbing (particularly on Cannon Cliff, pictured) and its skiing (the state-owned Cannon Mountain Ski Area), the mountain was home to the Old Man of the Mountain until the formation collapsed on May 3, 2003.

The Old Man of the Mountain, also known as the Great Stone Face or the Profile, was a series of five granite cliff ledges on Cannon Mountain in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, USA that, when viewed from the north, appeared to be the jagged profile of a face.

The formation was carved by glaciers and was first recorded as being discovered by a surveying team circa 1805. The Old Man was famous largely because of statesman Daniel Webster, a New Hampshire native, who once wrote: "Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoe makers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but up in the Mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men." The writer Nathaniel Hawthorne used the Old Man as inspiration for his short story "The Great Stone Face," published in 1850, in which he described the formation as "a work of Nature in her mood of majestic playfulness."

The profile has been New Hampshire’s state emblem since 1945. It was put on the state’s license plate, state route signs, and the back of New Hampshire’s Statehood Quarter, which is popularly promoted as the only US coin with a profile on both sides.