For nearly two centuries, the Hill Cumorah—located in Manchester, New York—has held historical significance for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Millions from across the globe have visited the hill in commemoration of the sacred events that took place there in the 1820s. The bicentennial of Joseph Smith's first visit to the Hill Cumorah will occur in 2023, and 2027 will mark the two hundredth anniversary of his obtaining the Book of Mormon plates from the angel Moroni. Over the past two hundred years, visitors have witnessed the Hill Cumorah's landscape change from a quiet and dense forest, to a bucolic pastureland, to a tourist-centered gathering place, and eventually to a performance venue equipped to accommodate thousands of visitors. Throughout it all, millions of people have experienced this sacred site of the Restoration. In an effort to elucidate intentions to rehabilitate the Hill Cumorah in light of the upcoming bicentennial anniversaries, this article addresses how the restored Church of Jesus Christ has sought to use and preserve the hill as a part of its sacred religious heritage over time.The Hill Cumorah is one of approximately ten thousand drumlins located south of Lake Ontario in the state of New York. These drumlins are teardrop-shaped hills that were formed by glaciers as they advanced and retreated across the landscape over long periods of time.1 Stretching north to south, the Hill Cumorah is more than a mile and a half long and just shy of a half mile wide. It is also seven hundred feet above sea level and rises one hundred forty feet above its surrounding lowlands.2 The hill's summit is found on its north end, tapering into a plateau before gradually descending to the south, with its east side being steeper than the west. According to the Natural Resources Conservation Services of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the hill's material composition is porous and permeable, which creates a high potential for erosion.3 Through natural erosion and human activity, the Hill Cumorah has experienced significant topographical changes since the region's last glacier disappeared (approximately twelve thousand years ago).4Prior to European colonization, western New York was occupied by groups of Native Americans. Towards the end of the Woodland period (approximately 1000 CE), village life emerged as Native Americans relied more heavily on agriculture and less on hunting. These Indigenous groups shaped the land through cultivation, creating trail networks, and by building log palisades. By 1500 CE, the Iroquois Confederacy—an alliance between six Native American tribes—formed in western New York. The Seneca Tribe predominantly inhabited the region of present-day Palmyra and they named the land “Genesee” meaning “beautiful valley” or “pleasant clear opening.”5 By 1779, American military expeditions during the Revolutionary War brought an end to the Iroquois Confederacy, who were allied with the British.6 Subsequently, many Native Americans in the region relocated to Canada or were displaced onto reservations, allowing further colonial settlement in New York state.7 To compensate New York's soldiers for their participation in the Revolutionary War, Congress created the New Military Tract that divided Genesee lands into one hundred- and five hundred-acre allotments for military veterans.8 This distribution of land, together with private land sales in the area, resulted in the Euro-American population of Palmyra growing to over two thousand people by 1810.9When Joseph and Lucy Mack Smith arrived in the region with their family in 1816, the landscape surrounding the Hill Cumorah was most likely heavily wooded with partial clearings as early colonial settlers established roads and cleared fields for farming.10 Alexis de Tocqueville's description of the forested landscape of western New York several years later helps visualize what the area looked like: “Over our heads stretched a vast dome of vegetation. Below this thick veil and amid the damp depths of the forest, there lay one vast confusion, a sort of chaos. Trees of all ages, foliage of all colors, plants, fruits and flowers of a thousand species, entangled and intertwined. Generations of trees have succeeded one another there through uninterrupted centuries and the ground is covered with their debris.”11The Smith family, having relocated from Vermont after years of crop failures, purchased a farm roughly three miles north of the Hill Cumorah. The Smiths arrived in Palmyra during the Second Great Awakening, and Joseph Smith Jr.’s accounts describe how the region had been thoroughly evangelized. This religious revivalism, along with Joseph's concern for his salvation, led him to the heavily forested area of his family's farm where he prayed to know which church would lead him to forgiveness of sin and salvation. Joseph's First Vision began the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Integral to this restoration was the Hill Cumorah, where an ancient record that contained the “fulness of the everlasting Gospel” was buried (JS–H 1:34).Joseph recorded that on the night of September 21, 1823, three years after his First Vision, he was visited by a glorious messenger sent from God. The messenger, who introduced himself as Moroni, visited three different times, taking the entire night and lasting until dawn. Moroni told Joseph about an ancient record, “written upon gold plates,” which was buried in a hill nearby. The record recounted a partial history of the former inhabitants of the American continent. Moroni delivered this message again later the next morning and commanded Joseph to share it with his father (JS–H 1:34, 48–50). After Joseph confided in his father about these angelic visitations, he went to the hill that he described as “of considerable size and the most elevated of any in the neighborhood.” He knew the correct place the instant he arrived, having seen it in vision when Moroni had taught him the night before (JS–H 1:50–51). After prying away a large rock that covered the stone box where the ancient record lay, Joseph tried three times to remove the gold plates, but with each attempt he was stopped by a shock that pulsed through his body. In his frustration, he asked why he was unable to obtain the record. Moroni replied that it was because Joseph had not kept the commandments of the Lord. This chastisement was in reference to a warning Moroni had given the previous night, admonishing Joseph to not be influenced by any other motive in obtaining the plates than that of building the kingdom of God. Moroni instructed Joseph to return to the hill annually to meet with him until it was time for Joseph to receive the plates. Of those annual meetings, Joseph recorded, “As I had been commanded, I went at the end of each year, and at each time I found the same messenger there, and received instruction and intelligence from him at each of our interviews, respecting what the Lord was going to do, and how and in what manner his kingdom was to be conducted in the last days” (JS–H 1:54). The significance of the Hill Cumorah to the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ is highlighted by these annual angelic tutorials. Not only was the hill the repository for the ancient record containing “the fulness of the everlasting Gospel” (JS–H 1:34), it became a place where Joseph grew in his understanding of, and preparation for, his role in the Lord's latter-day work.On September 22, 1827, during his fifth visit to the hill, Joseph finally retrieved the plates, which he later translated by the gift and power of God. Although the exact location where the plates were buried is unknown, Joseph recounted they were deposited “on the west side of this hill, not far from the top” (JS–1:51). Knowledge of Joseph's possession of the plates quickly spread, tempting some to try to steal the plates from him.Joseph's ties to the Hill Cumorah had consequences for its landscape. Although people in the area were skeptical about his claims about gold plates and angels, some searched the hill for themselves. In 1899, while serving as a missionary in the Eastern States Mission, John Mills Whitaker visited with Mr. Like, a Palmyra resident, who described treasure hunters digging for weeks, bringing “GOLD CHANTERS,” and eventually leaving in disgust at the amount of money they had spent searching in vain.12 Alvin P. Bean, who later grew up on the Smith farm in the early twentieth century, recalled a similar scene: Another interesting thing that happened, and which also proved a point, was the sight of a myriad of little lights all over the Hill Cumorah at night. Those lights were lanterns, and they belonged to people who were up there with their picks and shovels digging for that gold that we had told them existed there in the form of golden plates. It proved one thing. They didn't really disbelieve everything we told them. At least they thought there was enough truth in the story that they were going to go see for themselves if that gold was there. Of course, they never found it, but it was kind of fun just to watch them. The hill was pretty pockmarked with holes for a number of years.13As the early Latter-day Saints migrated from New York to Ohio and Missouri, then to Illinois, and finally to the Great Basin, they left behind important sites from the early days of the Restoration. From 1831, when Joseph Smith and most church members left New York, to the time the church reclaimed the Smith's farm at the turn of the twentieth century, the Hill Cumorah increasingly became celebrated as a sacred place for members of the restored Church of Jesus Christ. This was partly on account of early church leaders who remembered the hill and retold its significance.The first recorded description of the Hill Cumorah came from Oliver Cowdery in 1835. Describing the hill in three sections, Cowdery recorded that it “presented a varied appearance.” In the north, the hill “rose suddenly from the plain, forming a promontory without timber, but covered with grass.” Passing to the south, he recorded seeing “scattering timber” before being surrounded by “the common forest of the country.” He wrote further, “When myself visited the place in the year 1830, there were several trees standing: enough to cause a shade in summer, but not so much as to prevent the surface being covered with grass which was also the case when the record was first found.”14In 1841, only ten years after the Smith's left New York, the first visual image of the Hill Cumorah appeared as a woodcut, which was based on drawings produced by historians John Warner Barber and Henry Howe.15 The woodcut depicts the hill from the north looking south, showing trees standing on both the east and west sides of the hill, but the face of the northern slope is treeless and grassy. The image also shows split-rail fencing, likely installed to contain farm animals that grazed on the hill. These features coincide with Cowdery's description “that even the part cleared was only occupied for pasturage, its steep ascent and narrow summit not admitting the plow of the husbandman, with any degree of ease or profit.”16In 1853, the first known photograph—a daguerreotype—of the hill was produced by H. K. Heydon. This original daguerreotype has been lost, but the image was preserved through illustrations. An 1858 image, based on Heydon's photograph, shows a northwestern view of the hill that resembles earlier descriptions, with the northern face remaining grassy and the eastern and western slopes more heavily forested.17 These early descriptions and images of the hill are valuable to our understanding of how it looked during Joseph Smith's time because during the subsequent twenty-five years it experienced profound changes from its previously forested condition.In 1878, Orson Pratt and Joseph F. Smith visited the Hill Cumorah and reported to John Taylor that most of the trees on the hill had been removed. Referring to the narrow ridge of the northeast summit they noted, “Here stand seven large trees, that seem to have escaped the destruction of the forest that once covered this part of the hill.” While only a handful of trees remained on this portion of the hill, they observed that one hundred yards south of the highest point, the ridge widened and there began “a forest with beautiful groves of hickory, elm, beach [sic], and other kinds of wood which extend to the base on the west side, and nearly to the base on the east, and about a quarter of a mile south.”18These changes were also recorded by other visitors to the hill and were captured in photographs. While on a business trip to the eastern United States in 1885, Joseph W. Summerhays described an absence of trees in his journal saying, “There is still some timber on the south end of the hill but none at the north . . . there is one large stump on the very top of the hill and the only tree on the north end is one standing on the east side about half way down the hill.” He observed that trees must have previously grown there because of the stumps left behind, and at the time of his visit, both the north and west sides were “under cultivation.”19 Corroborating Summerhays's observations, Andrew Jensen, Edward Stevenson, and Joseph Black, who traveled to the Hill Cumorah in 1888 during their fact-finding mission to church historic sites, wrote the following: Besides the north end its eastern and western slopes are quite steep and the top consists of a narrow ridge somewhat rocky. Both sides of the north end of the hill have been plowed by the present owner clear to the top, and only a very few trees have been suffered to remain of the dense forest that no doubt covered the hill at the time Joseph received the plates. About 200 yards south from the north end on the west side, however, is a beautiful beech grove containing, we should judge, about six acres of land; most of the trees are small but stand very close together.20In only ten years, what Pratt and Smith described in 1878 as “a forest of beautiful groves,” occupying portions of the west, east, and south slopes of the hill, had become a single small grove located on the hill's southwest face. According to Willard Washington Bean, who later lived on the historic Joseph Smith family farm, the deforestation was caused by John Sampson, who harvested timber on the hill and surrounding properties.21Shortly after their 1888 visit, Stevenson referred to the hill's southern plateau as “an agricultural district,” and Joseph Black noted in his autobiography that buckwheat and corn were cultivated in the south that also included a few farms and orchards.22 Black also mentioned corn was growing on the western slope one-third of the way to the top. Several decades later, in 1925, Frederick J. Pack—a Latter-day Saint geology professor—recapitulated these descriptions, recalling that the hill was “almost entirely devoid of trees” with the exception of “the west side slightly farther south” that was “thickly forested.” Pack added that “grass was abundant, both within and without the forest” and based on the stumps left behind he knew the forest “extended farther to the north than at present.”23Photographs of the Hill Cumorah taken during this period confirm these written descriptions. The trees remaining on the western slope can be seen in a photograph taken by George E. Anderson in 1907 while he was traveling to his mission to Great Britain.24 These trees, as well as the cornfields, appear on a 1915 postcard.25 A Fellowcrafts Shop card copyrighted in 1920 also shows the remaining trees, in addition to the hill's “narrow” and “somewhat rocky ridge.”26From the time the Smith family moved to New York in 1816 to when the Church of Jesus Christ began acquiring properties associated with its sacred history, the Hill Cumorah had several different owners. In December 1907, Apostle George Albert Smith purchased for the church the nearby historic Smith farm. Seven years later, in 1915, President Joseph F. Smith called Willard and Rebecca Bean to manage the farm by living there, cultivating the land, and, if possible, making friends in the community.27 The Beans were the first Latter-day Saints to resettle in Palmyra since the 1830s, and they were met with fierce prejudice. Despite their unwelcomed arrival, the Beans’ tenure in Palmyra was highlighted by their resilience, persistence, patience, and service, which ultimately paved the way for the church to acquire the Hill Cumorah.When the Beans arrived in Palmyra, the Hill Cumorah was owned by James Inglis and Pliny Sexton. Inglis owned the west side of the hill and Sexton owned the remainder. Bean cultivated friendships with both men and, in 1923, he tactfully negotiated the purchase of Inglis's portion of the hill after learning of Inglis's plans to retire from farming.28 This purchase was finalized on September 17 and a few days later between two thousand to three thousand people participated in a centennial celebration of the angel Moroni's first appearance to Joseph Smith on the hill. At this celebration, an American flag was erected on the hill's summit, which was still owned by Pliny Sexton, and President Heber J. Grant led a Hosanna shout.29 One year later, in 1924, Sexton passed away. At his death, Sexton's properties went to his heirs who were antagonistic towards the church and who vowed they would never sell at any price. Notwithstanding their early resistance, Sexton's heirs eventually decided to sell, and in 1928 Bean purchased the remainder of the Hill Cumorah on behalf of the church.30After the purchase, Bean “began to bring it back to its original self by setting out evergreen and hardwood trees, ten or twelve thousand each year.”31 In total, Bean estimated he planted sixty-eight thousand trees over the next few years. At his request, he received sixty-five thousand seedling donations from the New York State Conservation Department and with the help of missionaries, family members, and other volunteers he transplanted an additional three thousand saplings from the Sacred Grove.32Bean's vision for the Hill Cumorah was tied to his missionary zeal. He wanted the hill to be noticed and accessible to visitors. He planted a hedge along the top of the western slope of the hill that spelled the word “CUMORAH” in letters that were approximately forty-two feet wide and twenty-four feet high.33 The hedge faced the Canandaigua Road in hopes of catching the attention of tourists in their passing automobiles. To the Presiding Bishopric Bean wrote: More peoples pass by [the hill] in a day than pass by this [the Smith] farm . . . year-round. Hence the opportunity for missionary work. I keep a flag flying from the hill and have a drive-way sign at the house with CUMORAH FARM on it. Also have a sign by [the] roadside reading “CUMORAH (Mormon) Hill. September 22[,] 1827, the angel Moroni delivered to Joseph Smith the sacred record containing the pre-Columbian history of America. See-Book of Mormon.” I have a fine family living there who take pleasure in passing out literature to the many tourists who stop to enquire and snap [photos of] the Hill.34Bean installed fourteen signs on or near the hill, containing 1,690 letters. He noted how good the Cumorah hedge looked from the road and he felt it would “answer the purpose very nicely until trees grow and obstruct or until replaced by an electric sign along crest of hill.”35 While Bean's idea of an electric sign never materialized, his desire to use the hill as a missionary tool continued to encourage many of his projects. In 1929, he began building a road leading to the summit of the hill. He used a plow scraper drawn by farm horses until the slope was reduced to a 6 percent grade, which made it possible for visitors to drive their automobiles to the top of the hill “without changing gear.”36 After beginning the construction of the road, Bean wrote to the Presiding Bishopric proposing additional ideas for developing the hill into a missionary attraction. “We have an Elder stationed . . . who pilots tourists upon the hill and explains to them all they desire to know. Now if we had a Bureau of Information, a MONUMENT on top, part of the ground paved for parking and set out to ornamental shrubs, flowers, lawn, etc., we could begin to divert tourist travel this way, and do more real missionary work than a dozen field missionaries.”37Bean's suggestion to erect a monument on the top of the hill was not immediately endorsed by church leaders who “hesitated and questioned the [project's] advisability, fearing that it might be desecrated and marred by souvenir hunters.” Bean assured them that the community would be “proud of it and treat it as their very own.”38 A few years later a ten-foot bronze statue of Moroni, sculpted by Torleif Knaphus, was installed atop an intricately carved granite pillar base.39 Knaphus prayerfully designed the monument and incorporated many symbolic elements of the Restoration in his design. When selecting the exact position for the monument on top of the hill, Knaphus wrote: “We proceeded and experimented just where to place the Monument and what way to turn it. We went down, drove up and down the highway, passing the Hill so as to see on which place it would appear the best and back again to the top of the Hill.”40 After careful consideration, they decided the monument would be placed on the northern end of the hill's summit with Moroni facing north toward the Smith farm, where he first appeared to Joseph Smith.41 Fearful heavy winds might topple the monument, Bean filled the statue with concrete, securing it to a steel rod.42 The monument was dedicated by President Heber J. Grant on July 21, 1935. In his dedicatory prayer, President Grant dedicated “the Hill itself” as well as “the ground surrounding it.” He also asked the Lord to preserve the monument from the elements so it could stand as a testimony of God, of Jesus Christ, and of Jesus Christ's dealings with the former inhabitants of the American continent.43 The celebration brought over two thousand participants, including a chronicler named Carl Carmer who recalled: “I thought—these people have come back here to a country I have known a long time. . . . I thought of Mecca and Bethlehem and I suddenly realized that the minds and emotions of a million people over the world were turned at this moment to this hillside just out of Palmyra . . . then the big bearded man who had announced the hymn stepped forward and spoke: ‘We stand on holy ground.’”44Two years after the dedication of the Angel Moroni Monument, the church completed construction of a Bureau of Information at the northwest base of the Hill Cumorah. Architect Lorenzo Young designed the structure to resemble ancient American architecture.45 To create a Mayan appearance, Young used uncoursed stone and ornamental frames around the doors and windows. Two short roads connected the Bureau of Information and its parking area to Canandaigua Road and a third road linked the building to the access road that Bean had built on the hill. The bureau included an apartment for a missionary couple and controls to the lights that illuminated the hill and monument.46 Apostle John Widstoe dedicated the building on August 29, 1937.47 It welcomed visitors for more than sixty years. These additions of the late 1930s, along with the Hill Cumorah Pageant, brought many visitors to the hill during a time when fewer missionaries were financially able to serve missions due to the Great Depression.48As early as 1917, Latter-day Saints from nearby Rochester, New York, began making annual pilgrimages to the Smith farm every July 24th to celebrate the arrival of the Latter-day Saint pioneers to the Salt Lake Valley.49 Building on that tradition, B. H. Roberts, then president of the Eastern States Mission, organized a mission conference at the Smith farm in the early 1920s to coincide with the local Pioneer Day celebration.50 The mission conference was so successful that it was repeated for several years under the name “Palmyra Celebration” or “Cumorah Conference.”51 In keeping with the missionary focus, missionaries traveling to and from the conference were expected to continue preaching along the way. Over time, these special mission conferences expanded to include musical and theatrical performances, athletics, baptismal services, campfire meetings, and pilgrimages to the Hill Cumorah.52 Reflecting on one of the early dramatizations performed in the Sacred Grove during the annual mission conference, Willard Bean's son Alvin recorded: In July 1926 we put on a skit which should probably be classified as the forerunner to the pageant which draws such crowds at the Hill Cumorah each summer. The story was written by a lady missionary named Norma Fairbanks who was a dear friend of my folks for many, many years. They asked me to take the part of the Prophet Joseph Smith even though I was only eight years old, but there was nobody around that was 14. I hesitated and at first refused. Finally, it was B. H. Roberts who prevailed upon me to take the part of the Prophet. When he asked me why I hesitated to take the role of Joseph Smith, I told him I had been thinking about it for several days and was worried. I finally said, “Well, OK. I'll take the part if I don't have to see an angel.” That had been concerning me because I didn't know exactly how I would react and what would happen if an angel appeared.53While the annual mission conferences would include visits to the Hill Cumorah it wasn't until 1935—the same year the Angel Moroni Monument was dedicated—that the theatrical performances were permanently moved from the Smith farm to the hill.54 These early pageants were originally performed at the base of the hill with the audience seated on the western hillside, but this arrangement only lasted until 1937 when a multilevel stage, designed to resemble a Mayan temple, was constructed on the western side of the hill.55 At this same time, mission president Donald B. Colton announced plans to formally host a pageant as an independent annual event. “America's Witness for Christ,” which later became known as the Hill Cumorah Pageant, was subsequently held every year except during, and in the first years following, World War II (1942–1947).56 In 1942, a local Palmyra newspaper reported that “Postponement of the pageant, on account of the war, made possible the use of the ground for the production of food.”57 The field at the base of the hill, which was normally used for audience seating, was transformed into a “Victory-Welfare Garden” to supplement wartime food rationing. The field was entirely dedicated to bean crops and by the fall of 1942 volunteers harvested fifty-one bushels of white beans and two thousand pounds of red kidney beans.58 In the summer of 1948, the pageant was revived and that year's attendance was approximately eighty thousand people.59The following year, the First Presidency asked Thorpe B. Isaacson, second counselor in the Presiding Bishopric, to visit Palmyra and “determine whether or not it [the pageant] should continue.” Bishop Isaacson reported back recommending it should not only be continued, but should be “expanded, increased, and improved.”60 Following his recommendation, the annual presentation was transitioned from an Eastern States Mission activity to a church-sponsored production. Earlier that year, George Q. Morris, president of the Eastern States Mission, wrote to John D. Giles of the Historic Sites Committee: If I come out to April conference, a few of us could get together and go over the thing quite thoroughly with the idea in mind of developing it on a very permanent basis and on such a high plane that it would merit the interest and attention of the nation and would win comment and publicity from the leading magazines and newspapers and comments of the country. . . . Hasn't the time arrived for this to take its true place and become a big permanent attraction, worthy of national attention?61That same year (1949), Bishop Isaacson wrote to President George Albert Smith, requesting the removal of “a number of large trees on the west side of the Hill” to accommodate permanent pageant infrastructure. The proposed infrastructure was desired so it would not be necessary “from year to year to rebuild the entire production from the ground up.” In addition to making room for pageant infrastructure, Isaacson also requested moving trees to help control echoing from the Cumorah farm barn located behind pageant audiences. By transplanting trees in “strategic points near the barn” the echoing effect would be absorbed into the trees instead of reverberating off the barn.62 Within a few weeks, Giles relayed a response from the First Presidency opposing the construction of permanent infrastructure, explaining they were worried it would “mar the landscape” and would be impractical for only two or three days of use out of the entire year.63 Later that year, however, Giles relayed approval of Isaacson's request to transplant trees to prevent echoing. In this approval, he suggested they remove trees from the west side of the hill, believing it would benefit the already heavily forested area. “Taking the number required would not injure the forest but would help it as the trees are much too thick for their own good. I believe I told you that two years ago we paid $1,000 to have 4,000 trees removed. In a year or two we ought to have that many taken out to give those remaining a better chance for growth and symmetrical development.”64The following year, Giles expressed concern over erosion on the hill in a letter to mission president Morris. In his letter, he discouraged widening the road leading from the Bureau of Information to the Angel Moroni Monument because the nature of the soil was prone to landslides. He wrote they had already spent a lot of money developing the ground