Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Is there a face visible on the west side of Salt Lake's Ensign Peak?


    There's a face of some sort on the west side of Ensign Peak.           Photograph by Ray Boren



IS there a face on the west side of Ensign Peak, north of downtown Salt Lake City?
Retired Deseret News editor and long-time Capitol Hill neighborhood resident Ray Boren said to him it resembles a St. Bernard dog, not a human face at all.
Looking at Boren's photograph (shown above), there is definitely a face or resemblance of some sort there, probably depends on one's own imagination what it appears to be ...
However, it was a different story a century ago:
"Salt Lake has a 'Great Stone Face'; It's Irish" was a June 26, 1918 headline in the Salt Lake Herald newspaper.
The story credits Miss Mary Elizabeth Downey, State Library organizer, for first noticing the face on the side of the historic Utah mountain peak. Working at the State Capitol Building, she had a clear window view of Ensign Peak, back when there was little housing development to the north.
"I an generally rather dense in seeing such things, but I confess this struck me instantly," Downey told the Herald newspaper. "The fact that the afternoon shadows grow longer, the profile is merely intensified adds to its charm. Tourists would be delighted to be shown this phenomenon of 'The Laughing Irishman.' He is standing guard over Ensign Peak as a sentry and is laughing at us little folk, working like ants in the great city below."


              Ensign Peak as seen from State Street and South Temple Street.

             The view from atop Ensign Peak, looking west toward the "Face" (not visible).
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