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SALT LAKE CITY — If you ever get lost in Utah, just look for the nearest mountain range. Cities and schools in Utah have been marking their territory with mountainside letters for more than 100 years.
"I think it's a great tradition," said Roy Webb with the University of Utah Marriott Library. "It's a visual reminder for the entire city."
While the history of this tradition is a little cloudy in Utah, Webb said he believes it started at the University of Utah as an example of class rivalry.
The tradition begins
"In 1905, the sophomores went up and put a great big ‘07' on the hillside where (the 'U') is now. As soon as the freshmen saw that, they went up and changed it to an ‘08,' " he said.
The other classes soon joined in. They'd change the year on Mount Van Cott as soon as they could haul buckets of lime up there. That's when a student named Stayner Richards suggested they make a large block "U" to honor the entire school. So, students would haul hundreds of buckets of lime to fix the "U" when the rain washed it away.
"That went on for a couple of years. Then, in 1907, they decided to make it more permanent," Webb said.
The "U" has 240 LED lights, half of them white and the other half red. Crews go up twice a year to see if there are any problems.
He said when they decided to make a concrete "U," the school made a big deal out of it. All classes were cancelled, the school borrowed mules from the Army, and every male student carried concrete up the hill for three days while the ladies maintained base camp.
"They just hauled it up there in wheelbarrows and buckets," Webb explained.
Now, the "U" has 240 LED lights, half of them white and the other half red. Crews go up twice a year to make sure the lights are in working order and to see if there are any problems they need to fix.
Three letters originally planned at "Y" Mountain
Brigham Young University built the famous "Y" in 1906. According to byucougars.com, university officials commissioned surveyors to put all three letters, "BYU," on the mountain, starting with the "Y" to make sure it was centered.
Officials expected to complete laying out all three letters by 10 a.m. By 4 p.m., only the Y was covered. Plans to fill in the other two letters were scrapped.
–BYUCougars.com
The website goes on to say, "Officials expected to complete laying out all three letters by 10 a.m. By 4 p.m., only the Y was covered. After such a laborious day of work, plans to fill in the other two letters were scrapped."
Since then, dozens of letters have popped up all over Utah. You can also see them in other mountain states like Arizona, New Mexico and Montana.
No Bingham whitewash this year?
Even high school kids have gotten in on the act.
"Whitewashing the 'B' " has been a tradition with Bingham High School since 1927," said Quinn Pitcher, student body president at Bingham.
Well, it was a tradition. Pitcher said the "B" is on land owned by Kennecott Utah Copper, and it had trouble setting a date to let students do it this year. But then, a major landslide at the mine seemed to kill the tradition.
"That really did seal the deal that we weren't going to be doing this," Pitcher said.
He said he was looking forward to whitewashing the "B," especially since his older siblings also did it.
"That was the hard thing," he said. "A lot of students were very disappointed."
He hopes the tradition could come back one day, but he thinks it'll be hard to reestablish.
