History
A long-standing myth that hillside letters were built to identify communities from the air for early pilots who air-dropped mail is untrue. The first three mountain monograms built were constructed to end class rivalries. Letters have also been erected to celebrate winning teams, to commemorate the building of high schools, in memory of local community members, and as Boy Scout projects.
The first hillside letter built was a C in March 1905. It was constructed out of concrete and placed on Charter Hill overlooking the UC Berkeley. The UC Berkeley classes of 1907 and 1908 proposed this project as a means of ending the rivalry and the unruly physical encounters that had become a part of their annual rush each spring. The UC Berkeley yearbook would later record that the two classes would go down in the history of the University as those who sacrificed their class spirit for love of their alma mater.
A few weeks following the building of Berkeley’s C, the class rivalry of the sophomores and freshmen at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City produced a hillside U. The following year, Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, proposed and surveyed the first three-lettered hillside emblem BYU, but reduced it to the single letter Y after realizing the amount of labor involved. The M for the Miners of the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado, became the nation’s fourth hillside letter in 1908, and it has been illuminated every night since the early 1930s. A few years later, high schools began building hillside letters; the first one was a T for Tintic High School in Eureka, Utah, built in 1912.
By the 1920s and 1930s, letters were being rapidly constructed across the West. Although the pace has slowed since then, newly constructed letters continue to appear today. Meanwhile, many letters are fading due to lack of maintenance (especially in cases where the school that created the letter has closed), or have been removed outright due to environmental concerns or changing aesthetic preferences.
Read more about this topic: Hillside Letters
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—Erma Brombeck (20th century)
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