Hillside letters or mountain monograms are a form of geoglyph (more specifically hill figures) common in the American West, consisting of large single letters, abbreviations, or messages emblazoned on hillsides, typically created and maintained by schools or towns. There are approximately 500 of these geoglyphs, ranging in size from a few feet to hundreds of feet tall. They form an important part of the western cultural landscape, where they function as symbols of school pride and civic identity, similar to water towers and town slogans on highway "welcome to" signs in other regions.
Read more about Hillside Letters: History, Distribution, Construction, Cultural Significance
Famous quotes containing the words hillside and/or letters:
“A village seems thus, where its able-bodied men are all plowing the ocean together, as a common field. In North Truro the women and girls may sit at their doors, and see where their husbands and brothers are harvesting their mackerel fifteen or twenty miles off, on the sea, with hundreds of white harvest wagons, just as in the country the farmers’ wives sometimes see their husbands working in a distant hillside field. But the sound of no dinner-horn can reach the fisher’s ear.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Harvey: About this Voltaire.
Helene: What about him?
Harvey: How’d he ever get time to do all he did?
Helene: He lived to be old.
Harvey: Even so, how many letters did he write?
Helene: Oh, I don’t know exactly. Thousands.
Harvey: I can’t remember when I even wrote one.
Helene: You should try.
Harvey: It’s too late. I wouldn’t know where to send it.”
—Tom Waldman (d. 1985)