Scott’s Scrapbook featuring the Old Man of the Mountains– October 18, 1949

Newspapers have been fighting for their survival for years due to declining subscriptions that coincided with the availability of “free” news on the internet. Consequently, newspapers look for ways to cut costs, such as reducing the number of comics or syndicated features they carry.

But in the heyday of newspapers, they tried to make themselves distinctive by offering things that their competitors did not. Some of those things were illustrated features like "Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” or the one above, “Scott’s Scrapbook,” which appeared in the Lorain Journal.

The example shown above is from October 18, 1949. R. J. Scott is the artist. The feature was made available to the Journal by Central Press (which I wrote about here), which was a division of King Features in Cleveland. (Click here for a nice tribute to R. J. Scott on the King Features website.)

****

The main topic of this particular sample – the Old Man of the Mountain – is of interest to me. It was one of the things we saw during a 1966 family camping trip to New England.

What’s funny is that I remember having trouble seeing him from our distant roadside vantage point. He was just too far away.

Here's the photo my parents took. No zoom lens on that camera!

It wasn’t until my parents picked up this travel brochure a few years later that I could appreciate just how much the rock formation resembled a man’s profile.

It was a real tragedy when the Old Man of the Mountain collapsed in 2003. Happily, New Hampshire honors his memory with an innovative solution.