The Y is
a beacon on the hill to many people. In an interesting way it represents home.
It identifies us, it tells people
that they have arrived to the site of something very unique, very different,
someplace very special
Its 1906, and Brigham Young University,
as a university, is just three years old, an institution still searching for its
identity.
On a spring day, a conflict between the rival classes of 1906 and 1907
would surprisingly lead to the creation of an enduring symbol of unity
and identity. The class of 1907
decides that they want to do something to kind of stake their claim, so they go up
and they carve
a 0 and a 7 on the mountain. That made the senior
class mad and so they went up the mountain and took it down
and they put their own up, so there was a fight between
classes. I believe, at one point, fisticuffs are actually thrown and it eventually gets
broken up
and President Brimhall decides something has to be done.
We're gonna do one symbol, one symbol only, "BYU",
and this will stand for all of us forever.
The original plan was to paint the letters "BYU"
on the mountainside. President Bramhall asks a drafting professor and his
students to map out the design.
And they went up on the hill with the tranchent and
measured the angle. They tested
the angle of the slope, the way that a block letter was to appear down here in
the valley.
On an April morning in 1906, students set out to build the first letter.
The Y is a monumental 380 feet tall, slightly larger than a football
field.
They get to work transporting lyme and sand up the mountain.
So it's 9 o'clock in the morning by the time they get started. They set up a
line
on the mountain where they're spaced about eight to ten feet apart,
and they hand bags of a lyme and sand mixture
from the bottom of the hill up to the top, and then they dump it
across the Y surface. It takes a lot longer than
anyone thought it was going to take. They missed their lunches
and some of the students were fainting.
They got tired when they started early in the morning
and they were exhausted lifting
these pails back and forth. They thought they'd be through by noon, and they went all the way to
4 o'clock. So they quit,
and said we'll never put the B and the U in there.
They became discouraged after making the Y
and realized that that was a little bigger project than they could take on,
so they left it one-third complete and
Y Mountain was born. In the years that follow,
when the original lyme and sand mixture begins to wash away,
students hawl up more lyme, rocks and later plaster and whitewash.
Whitewashing the Y becomes an annual ritual for the BYU campus.
They called it Y day. They'd go up and
paint the Y again and get it clean and white. And so we'd just
have a bucket brigade, starting at the bottom. We'd send buckets of white wash up ,
hand in hand, and splash the buckets on the Y and
then there were some brushes, we would brush it in and
whiten it out. I can remember only once did I have the privilege of being in the
Y brigade
and it was quite a sight. You could see this long line of students going up
there and the buckets being passed from one to the other
going up and it was something that I think everybody
look to all year long. Staff, faculty members.
As the number of students rose, there's more manpower than needed for the
whitewashing effort.
Y day becomes a day of service for all students to work on campus
and in the local community. Y day became a city event
where there were too many students to just hand pails up. So they
went to city projects. We all went to school in our grubbies. We did the sort of
things like wash walls
and really give the place a good clean. It wasn't just
on campus. We did things for the elderly or for things that were run down around
in the city, in the parks.
It really did foster the spirit of "We belong to Brigham Young University".
Service is what brings people together more than any other thing
In the 1960's, if you didn't participate, they would shave your head of they would
toss you in the pond.
And then they'd have fun afterwards. They'd have a party with
games and refreshments. We had a lot of different contests going on,
and actually, one year, I caught the greased pig. And so Y day was
a big, big tradition in those days and we all look forward to it. In the late
1970's, the whitewashing tradition comes to an end when the Y is
covered with a gunnite mixture
flown to the site by helicopter. A mix of white cement and white sand keep the
symbol vibrant. But Y days and lighting the Y continue to be
important events for the BYU community. the other tradition that I personally love
is the lighting of the Y
because you can see the lit Y from almost anywhere in the valley
and it symbolizes something important going on campus.
In the 1940's, the intercollegiate knights were responsible
for lighting the Y,
using clumps of old mattress stuffing dipped in motor oil.
We get the mattress stuffing, make little balls
dipped in oil and then we would take those up to the mountain. We'd put a ball
about every foot all the way around, and then we would run up and down the Y and light those balls on fire
and from down here, it looked like one
solid fire all the way around it. Then they went from that into the torches.
I remember that night, all the lights would go on in our home.
We would look up on that mountain and we would watch the
parade of students working their way up with tortches
on the switchbacks. That was a big thing. In the '70's, we
had been denied the request to light the Y
so we prepared strings of lights
that would stimulate that same
aspect of clumps around it. When the
Y is lit, it's almost like a magnet. Everybody will see it from down there
and everybody wants to hike up here. We have close to
four hundred to a thousand people that hike this every day. Standing 380
feet tall, the Y is five times the height of the H in Hollywood, visible from
anywhere in Utah Valley. For BYU alumni and friends,
seeing the Y on the mountain is more than a geographical marker.
It has become a symbol of service, of unity, and of
.coming home
That letter has been there throughout my whole life, it's an old friend.
It means more than a letter on a mountain. It's just a very special
warm fuzzy feeling inside when I see it. It puts a lump in my throat. It makes me
feel as if I'm coming home.
The students know that when they see the Y on the mountain,
that they're at home and they're cared for. The spirit of the Y
is 33,000 young men and women strong
It's the soul, the heartbeat that defines BYU.