Thomas Cole : "View of Mountain Pass Called the Notch" (1839) - Fine Art Print

An autumnal landscape filled with foreboding. Crawford Notch, a narrow gorge of the Saco River in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, was the site of a well-publicized avalanche that killed the entire Samuel Willey family in 1826. Ironically, the family had fled to a prepared shelter at the first sign of trouble, but this only served to place them in the direct path of the landslide; their house was unaffected. Cole, who visited the site in 1828, pictures it with bare, twisted trees and an impending storm that signal danger for the diminutive figures below. Describing it for his diary, he wrote: .