Give me an M!
Give me a town in Montana, or the rural West for that matter, and I’ll give you a hillside letter!
Corning documented 400-plus such icons before writing her book, and is up to about 500 now. And, yes, cities and towns are still adding hillside letters - eight in the last year alone.
“Once built, they quickly become symbols of community and school, instant traditions shouting, 'Here we are!’ ” said James J. Parsons, the “dean” of hillside-letter historians and Corning’s inspiration for her own research.
In an interview with the Missoulian before his death, Parsons said hillside letters actually have “quite a respectable history.” In fact, his interest in the symbols was that of a geographer and professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
For three summers, Parsons mapped hillside letters and collected their stories, cataloging what he soon realized was a distinctly Western phenomenon. “In most of the Mountain West, they are as American as apple pie,” he said. “Even a Mennonite community in central Montana boasts one.”
Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada are the undisputed bastions of hillside letters. Missoula, in fact, once held claim to the town with the most letters - when, in the 1960s, its attendant hillsides featured not only Loyola’s L and the University of Montana’s M, but an MCHS for Missoula County High School.
“These monograms,” Parsons said, “are part of community and landscape history. For travelers in the arid West, they are anchors to the eye - a conspicuous and durable part of the identity of many communities.”
But why the West?
“Because we’ve got barren mountainsides,” he said.
Which, of course, makes western Montana prime hillside-letter territory. Witness Polson’s P, Arlee’s A, Drummond’s D, the F above Frenchtown, the V outside Victor . . . town to town, hillside to hillside.
Turns out, the M on Missoula’s Mount Sentinel was one of the West’s first hillside letters, having now spent a century presiding over the valley’s eastern portal.
The current, concrete M was built in May 1968, according to UM archives. It was preceded, however, by a series of other insignias, beginning with whitewashed rocks toted up and arranged on the hill by members of the junior class in 1908 or 1909 (there’s some dispute about the exact date).
A second M, this time built of wood, was installed by freshmen in 1912. This one stood upright, like a goalpost.
It blew over during the winter of 1915.
The following fall semester, the freshman class was again called to duty - this time forming a bucket brigade that relayed slabs of shale 600 feet up the hill for alignment and whitewashing.
Corning’s interest in hillside letters is more personal.
One summer years ago, while traveling through Tucson, Ariz., Corning pointed out the mountainside A that announces the University of Arizona’s proximity.
Her then-3-year-old son was just learning the alphabet, so was enthralled by his ability to “read” the hill.
“That’s A Mountain,” his mom instructed.
Miles and miles went by with nary a word from young Patrick.
“Why so quiet?” finally came the question from the front seat.
“I’m looking for B Mountain,” he said.
Whereupon, the family launched a vacation-long attempt to find not only B Mountain, but a whole alphabet of hillside letters - and Corning promised her son that someday she would write him a hillside-letter alphabet book.
Twenty-two years later, she made good on that promise.
What Corning didn’t realize until she began four years of research was how strongly held were the sentinments behind these community icons.
“It was really fascinating to discover how much these letters have been influenced by our Western history and how important they are to communities,” she said in a telephone interview last week.
“The dedication communities and schools have to preserving their letter is amazing,” Corning said. “Some of them, like your M, have been there for 100 years.”
“But the traditions live on,” she said, “because these places just wouldn’t be home without their hillside letters.”
The care and tending of hillside letters, for example, is often a local rite of passage. Freshmen whitewash the rocks. Or seniors do the honors, with their graduation year inscribed at the base. Or the whole town marches uphill for the afternoon.
At Missoula’s Loyola Sacred Heart High School, senior mentors accompany freshmen to the L on Mount Jumbo each fall.
The freshmen whitewash the letter. The seniors eat lunch.
Corning herself grew up in Escalante, Utah, home of a hillside E.
“I was the youngest of six children,” she said, “so I grew up listening to my sister and brothers talking about going up on the hill to paint the E. All that time, I looked forward to the day when I would be old enough to go.”
Corning’s favorite hillside letter story comes from Uintah, Utah, and dates to a tragedy in 1922 - when the Uintah School’s principal shot and killed a student who was threatening him.
The principal was charged with murder; a jury found him not guilty of the crime.
Uintah, however, was deeply divided as townspeople took sides for and against the accused man.
“They would actually sit on different pews in the church, they were so divided,” Corning said. “So the new principal started looking for ways to unify the community.”
The students needed a project, he believed. The principal suggested - what else? - that they build a hillside letter.
And so came Uintah’s U, which symbolized not only the town’s name, but also Utah, the United States and their commitment, as a town, to stand united.
On April 23, 1923, the entire community climbed up the hillside to build and whitewash a 50-by-100-foot U, Corning said. Its maintenance became a yearly community event.
“I don’t think there’s a person in the town who couldn’t tell you the story behind the letter,” she said. “All these years later, they still meet on the hill once a year.”
Parsons’ favorite tale arrived in the mail after his “hillside letter map” appeared in Harper’s magazine.
“Much tribal ritual and symbolism is associated with these monograms,” wrote Marc Rettig, who grew up in the little central Montana town of Highwood - home of a hillside H. “They are reminders of the fact that in small-town America, culture centers around the local school.”
By the time he saw Parsons’ map in the magazine, Rettig had left Montana far behind - for New York City. But he still remembered - and fondly, too - his turn whitewashing Highwood High School’s H with his fellow freshmen.
“All of us - all nine of us in the Class of ’74 - were dressed in the required uniform,” he wrote. “I don’t remember my costume exactly, but a typical wardrobe for a freshman boy might be a diaper, a bra and construction boots.
“After leapfrogging from Gossack Mercantile to the school parking lot and spending a half day in class, we climbed the hill to the huge, square-serified H. Under the scornful eye of the sophomores, we pulled weeds that had grown up to dim the letter, replaced stones displaced by cattle, frost or rivals, then used worn-out brooms to apply a fresh coat of lye whitewash.
“In my eyes at the time, that newly washed monogram was no small source of pride.”
Decades later, the memories brought a smile - but also, he quipped, a bit of anxiety. In his new, decidedly urban environs, Rettig said, proclaiming pride in a hillside letter was akin to “confessing an affection for plaid polyester trousers.”
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