The Stone Face - or Profile Rock - in more modern times.
Perhaps one of the more intensive investigations over the previous decade was that of the Stone Face on Pelham Brook in northwestern Massachusetts. It was originally brought to my attention by Matt B. over at the Stone Face Gazetteer during the early part of the decade with the arrival of a curious image in my e-mail of an old postcard. Subsequent trips to the Town of Rowe brought forth another postcard of Profile Rock also reported to be along Pelham Brook. The whole investigation was complicated in that both images bore little resemblance to one another.
Perhaps the easier part was hypothesize they were the same rock - despite the obvious difference - due to the matching backgrounds. Next came the Herculean task of finding the proverbial needle in a haystack - one rock along a very long mountain stream. Despite the enormous nature of this task alone, a likely suspect was located. Two trips to this rock alone, with numerous photographs taken, still left me wanting for a better prospect.
A renewed search was made towards the of 2008 after a night of heavy downpours. Pelham Brook is typically your normal sleepy mountain stream but on this day it had become raging torrent. Indeed, at some point in the past once such torrent took out the local bridge downstream also leaving me to wonder if the old location of Stone Face/Profile Rock was somehow affected. Despite the obstacles a second candidate in my search was found perched in the bank just alongside the torrents of water making their way through the ravine. A quick photograph taken, I climbed on out to research my find further while at home the following winter.
The winter passed and another visit to my hypothetical boulder in the Spring of '09 for another - more extensive - set of photographs still yielded nothing definitive. Finally in the waning days of 2009 a breakthrough! Careful, intensive examination, of the more recent photographs revealed several matching points of reference on both postcards. So although this was quite the chore - it has finally paid off.
