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New Hampshire
Before the fall: Stories behind the Old Man of the Mountain, 22 years on
He’s a symbol of the state of New Hampshire. Almost all of us know how he fell, but how was the Old Man created? It’s been 22 years since the fall of the Old Man of the Mountain, and we’re revisiting a few stories of where he came from in the first place.
Geology
Brian Fowler, president of the Old Man of the Mountain Legacy Fund and a structural geologist, says the Old Man’s creation story is a pretty simple one: He was always, slowly, falling apart.
“A lot of people would say, ‘Oh, it can’t possibly be created by Mother Nature.’ But it was,” Fowler said.
Pieces of the rock face fell from the wall in just the right way and at just the right time. Fowler says unlike man-made profiles, think Mount Rushmore, the Old Man was created by degradation, so his fate was destined to collapse.
Explorers in the area knew that long before Fowler first examined the Old Man in the 1970s.
Courtesy
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Old Man of the Mountain Legacy Fund
“Even back in the late 19th century, the then-state geologist, C.T. Jackson, was [telling] people: ‘If you haven’t seen it, you should get up there and have a look because it’s living on borrowed time,’” Fowler said. “A lot more time than I think he thought at that time it would have, but I drew the same conclusion.”
Since the Old Man fell in 2003, Fowler has received thousands of postcards, emails and photos from people who claim to have found another rock profile that could replace the Old Man. They do occur elsewhere from that same degradation process.
But Fowler said he doesn’t go out searching for them on his own.
“I guess I kind of figure I’ve seen the best, if you know what I mean,” Fowler said. “But they’re all over the place and people love to find them. So, I think there’s something in the human blood that is attracted to it.”
History
For years, independent curator Inez McDermott has studied the attraction and historical lore that have led people to the Old Man for centuries. She curated an exhibit at the Museum of the White Mountains for the 20th anniversary of when he fell. Fowler and McDermott are friends.
“You can look at the origin story as the geological scientific origin, which Brian [Fowler] has a good handle on, although a lot of it’s still a mystery,” McDermott said. “My understanding of the first white settlers to see the old man was in 1805, and there is still a battle between sort of two camps as to which surveying team saw it first.”
Some believe it was a team from Franconia, others say it was a team from Woodstock who first saw the Old Man.
People from urban areas in the northeast used to take horse-drawn carriage rides around New England, and would make pit stops in the White Mountains. It took a while before the Old Man gained cultural traction, the advent of rail travel helping, but McDermott said he really became a household name when the hotels and resorts started cropping up in the area in the late 1840s and 1850s.
“When people vacationed up there, a lot of times they would stay for three, four, five, six weeks,” McDermott said. “That’s when the Old Man starts to become a real tourist attraction.”
Inez McDermott
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Courtesy
A profile so massive and clear, it was described as godly or supernatural by some. The Old Man beckoned landscape painters, writers and poets to the area.
McDermott says the work of 19th century novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne further popularized the Old Man. His 1850 short story “The Great Stone Face” prompted many visitors to see the Old Man for themselves and is culturally relevant, managing to clinch a 3.8 out of 5 stars on Goodreads.
In Hawthorne’s version of the story, the Old Man was part of a prophecy. It claims a man who resembles the rock face would eventually be found, and he would be “the greatest and noblest personage of his time.”
Hawthorne drew parallels between the Old Man and 19th century lawyer and New Hampshire representative Daniel Webster.
A love story
Griffin Hansen, a 25-year-old filmmaker from Goffstown, reimagined the Old Man’s origin. In Hansen’s short film, “Within the Crystal Hills,” he is an impoverished miner from Franconia Notch who, motivated by love, becomes trapped in the mountains of the notch, transformed into the Old Man.
Hansen came up with the story alongside one of his classmates from the Savannah College of Art and Design.
“She brought in these beautiful, folksy and fairy tale-esque ideas of love and romance and belonging and being something for someone,” Hansen said. “And I brought in these very New Hampshire ideas of being very disciplined, of course the Old Man of the Mountain proper and all of these elements of local history from the ironworks and Saugus to the character being named Carrigain, after the mountaineer and the mountain.”
Screenshot
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Within the Crystal Hills
Hansen says the Old Man’s love story brought his family together. His maternal grandmother is the narrator of “Within the Crystal Hills.” Her family has lived in New Hampshire for generations.
Hansen’s iteration of the Old Man’s origin story was completely from his mind and that of his collaborator, inspired largely by a type of animation style they wanted to try out. He acknowledges there are many other tales of the Old Man out there.
“There’s a dozen origin stories,” Hansen said. “The Abenaki have origin stories. Nathaniel Hawthorne has origin stories. A lot of people and authors from the White Mountain area have come up with their own legends, so we wanted to come up with one ourselves.”
There are origins myths attributed to the Abenaki people, but NHPR was unable to confirm those stories with direct Abenaki sources. McDermott and Fowler have done extensive research on it, and have a theory. Since the Old Man was only visible for a few hundred yards at a specific spot and there’s little evidence of human land use in the area from centuries ago, it’s possible he wasn’t seen or documented by Native Americans before the settlers who documented it in the early 1800s.
A living legacy
Whichever story you believe about his creation: a natural geological process, a prophecy from on high, or a love story, the Old Man has an enduring legacy in New Hampshire. He graces highway signs, license plates and rest stop shot glasses. Some Granite Staters have him tattooed. There’s something about the Old Man that has kept him in the cultural zeitgeist for centuries, and Fowler and McDermott said they don’t expect that to go away anytime soon.
What employers are getting wrong, and how to fix it before it becomes a claim
New Hampshire’s employment law landscape heading into 2026 may not be dramatically different from last year, but the real risks lie in implementation missteps. From the initial setting of wages, to calculating and distributing wages, employers will likely find a specific statute and/or labor regulation governing the transaction. Failure to follow these detailed wage and hour laws can result in significant back wages and other penalties being imposed by the state or federal Department of Labor following an audit. Fortunately, however, this area of employment law is relatively easy to master, once you are familiar with the basics.
Notice compliance
One of the most common pitfalls for employers in New Hampshire is misunderstanding the wage and hour notice requirements under RSA 275 and the related New Hampshire Department of Labor Administrative Rules.
At the time of hire, employers must notify employees in writing of their rate of pay and the day and place of payment. This notice is traditionally delivered to employees by way of an offer letter or some sort of “New Hire Rate of Pay” form. (A sample form is available from the New Hampshire Department of Labor website.) What surprises most employers, however, is that Lab. 803.03(f)(6) also requires employers to request and obtain their employees’ signatures on this written notification of wages, and employers must keep a copy of the signed written notification of wages on file. Further, employers must notify employees in writing during the course of employment of any changes to wages or day of pay prior to such changes taking effect, and the employer must obtain the employee’s signature on this subsequent notification as well. (See RSA 275:49; Lab. 803.03.)
Employers are further required to notify employees in writing, or through a posted notice maintained in a place accessible to employees, of:
• employment practices and policies with regard to vacation pay, sick leave and other fringe benefits.
• deductions made from the employee’s payroll check, for each period such deductions are made.
• information regarding the deductions allowed from wage payments under state law. (RSA 275:49; Lab. 803.03.)
Policies regarding vacation and sick leave should inform employees whether or not the employer will “cash out” unused time at year end or at the end of employment, and if so, under what terms. Again, if any changes are made to vacation pay, sick leave and other fringe benefits during the course of employment (all of which are considered “wages” under New Hampshire law), employers must request and obtain their employees’ signatures on the written notification of the change, and must keep a copy of the signed form on file. (Lab. 803.03.) Importantly, notification by way of pay stub alone is not sufficient, and, these requirements apply to both increases and decreases in pay.
Two-hour minimum (reporting pay)
Another frequently overlooked obligation is New Hampshire’s two-hour minimum reporting pay requirement. Under RSA 275:43-a, non-exempt employees who report to work but are sent home early must generally be paid for at least two hours. Weather-related closures, client cancellations or operational slowdown days can trigger this rule. Employers should also note that the New Hampshire Department of Labor currently applies this law to remote-based employees. Consequently, employees who “report to work” at an employer’s request from a home office may likewise have a right to two hours of pay, depending on the circumstances.
Salaried vs. hourly employees
Misclassification of employees as exempt from overtime remains a significant source of compliance exposure. The position’s job duties — not the titles or label such as “salaried” — determine whether an employee qualifies for an overtime exemption.
Employers, particularly in nonprofits, health care and small businesses, unintentionally misapply exempt classifications to roles such as administrative staff, office managers, executive assistants, program coordinators or hybrid jobs that involve significant non-exempt tasks. Over time, as organizational needs evolve and employees take on broader responsibilities, job duties can drift outside of an exemption’s scope.
Best practice is to periodically review job descriptions and actual job duties to ensure continued compliance with exemption criteria, particularly following any significant restructuring or job redesigns.
Peg O’Brien is chair of McLane Middleton’s Employment Law Practice Group. She can be reached at margaret.o’brien@mclane.com.
Local News
“Our family wants to know what happened, who did this and why,” said the family of the victim.
A new photo has been released of the victim in a nearly 30-year-long unsolved murder case, in the hope of finding any new potential witnesses in the cold case, New Hampshire officials said.
“Our family wants to know what happened, who did this and why,” the family of Rosalie Miller said in a press release. “We miss her and want to give her peace.”
Miller was last seen on December 8, 1996 at her apartment in Manchester. At the time of her disappearance, Miller had plans on meeting friends in the Auburn, New Hampshire area, officials said.
Her body was found on January 20, 1997 in a partially wooded spot on a residential lot along the Londonderry Turnpike in Auburn, officials said in the release.
The autopsy report declared Miller’s death a homicide by asphyxiation due to ligature strangulation, N.H. officials wrote.
As part of a new effort to garner public help with the case, an “uncirculated” photo of Miller, 36, is being distributed “in hopes it may jog the memory of someone who saw or spoke with her in the winter of 1996,” Attorney General John M. Formella and New Hampshire State Police Colonel Mark B. Hall announced on behalf of the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit in a joint press release.
Investigators are especially hoping to talk to anyone who was in contact with Miller in December of 1996 or anyone “who may have seen her in the vicinity of the Londonderry Turnpike in Auburn during that time,” officials said in the release.
“We are releasing this new photograph today because we believe someone out there has information, perhaps a detail they thought was insignificant at the time, that could be the key to solving this case and bringing justice for Rosalie and those who loved her,” Senior Assistant Attorney General R. Christopher Knowles, New Hampshire Cold Case Unit Chief said in the release.
The New Hampshire Cold Case Unit encourages anyone with any amount of information to contact the group at [email protected] or (603) 271-2663.
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