The northern peak is the least visited and least developed of the Five Great Mountains, and the reason is political geography rather than scenery.
Why it never accumulated
The region spent long periods outside Han Chinese control, held by the Khitan, the Jurchen and the Mongols, and sat on or near a contested frontier for centuries.
Pilgrimage traffic, imperial patronage and the building that follows them require stability and access. Taishan had both for two thousand years; the northern peak did not.
The result is a mountain with the same formal status as the other four and a fraction of their infrastructure.
The transfer
The designation of the Northern Peak was at some point transferred from a mountain in what is now Hebei to this one in Shanxi.
When that happened is not established here. A Ming date is commonly repeated and should not be relied on without better sourcing than this entry has. What can be said is that the transfer happened, which, as at Nanyue, shows the five-peak scheme to be an administrative arrangement subject to revision rather than a fixed inheritance.
The Hanging Temple
The best-known structure in the area is not on the peak. Xuankong Si, the Hanging Monastery, is built into a cliff face a few kilometres away, its halls supported on beams driven horizontally into the rock.
It is remarkable for its engineering, and more remarkable for its contents: Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian figures are venerated in the same building, and in one hall Shakyamuni, Laozi and Confucius sit together.
Explicit three-teachings syncretism of that kind, stated in a single room, is unusual even in China. It draws more visitors than the mountain it stands beside.
The shrine
The Shrine of the Northern Peak at the foot claims a continuous history from the Han, and the mountain is described as sacred from the Zhou period.