By VERNON ROBISON
This week is “M Week” at Moapa Valley High School.
It has traditionally been a time of celebration for students, staff and the whole community.
For those who did not grow up in Moapa Valley, the observance of this strange, small-town celebration may be a bit puzzling. Indeed, the origins and rich traditions involved with the history of “M Week” may have even become forgotten by the younger generation that is currently attending MVHS. So, as a refresher, I have done a little research to explore some of the history of the “M Week” tradition. I am devoting this column to sharing some of what I found.
This long-held MVHS celebration was traditionally centered around the large letter ‘M’ on the side of the Mormon Mesa east of Overton. This mountain monogram is one of approximately 500 similar hillside letters which have been built all across the American west, each symbolic of school pride and civic identity.
Interestingly, the first hillside letter on record was a large letter ‘C’ placed on Charter Hill overlooking the University of California, Berkley. According to the article “Hillside Letters in the Western Landscape” by James J. Parsons, this letter was built in 1905 by the school’s then sophomore and freshman classes.
The following year, Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah proposed, surveyed and built the single letter Y. The 320 foot high letter appeared two thousand feet above the campus on a steep face of Utah’s Wasatch Front. In 1907, the sophomore and freshman classes at University of Utah in Salt Lake City produced another hillside letter, a large block U. Over the ensuing decades, hillside letters were being constructed all across the west, according to Parsons.
No one that I spoke to last week could remember just when the local “M” was first built. Eighty-two year old Bryant Robison, who was born in Logandale in 1932 and has lived here most of his life, said that he can’t remember a time when the great white letter was not there on the steep, reddish-brown hillside above Overton. But the first MVHS graduating class was in 1919. And Parson’s book states that the trend in building these hillside letters seemed to be at a heyday across the west during the 1920s and early 1930s.
Whenever it was built, the giant “M” quickly became a cherished landmark of the school and the community; a symbol of true Pirate pride. No doubt driven by the significant time, work and commitment it took to originally build it, a whole festival of activities grew up around regularly maintaining the letter. The ‘M’ had been built merely by whitewashing the rocky landscape on the steep hill. In the harsh desert environment, that whitewash surface must be refreshed on a regular basis for the letter to endure. Thus, for decades, the school held an “M Day” in order to do just that.
There were no classes that day. Instead students traversed the rugged terrain and whitewashed the ‘M’.
By the 1940s and 1950s it was a well-established tradition; and it had grown into an all-day, community-wide celebration. Elaine Whipple of Logandale, an MVHS graduate from the class of 1945, remembered going by bus to the base of the hillside below the ‘M’. She and her classmates then climbed a narrow trail up the steep incline to the top of the mesa.
“It was pretty dangerous going up, but nobody thought anything about it then,” Whipple said.
Once they reached the top, the students would form a bucket brigade, lowering the whitewash to senior class members on the hillside below who were actually painting the ‘M’.
“As I remember it, the boys did most of it,” Whipple said. “It was hard work. It was kind of tough working on the hillside that way.”
Of course, getting the barrels of whitewash to the top of the hill was a perilous job in itself. At that time, the dugway road from what is now Airport Road to the top of the mesa was little more than a narrow track. It was just wide enough for a single small vehicle to go up. But it was a perilous assent.
Robison, who graduated in the MVHS class of 1950, recalled one year when local farmer, Mads Jorgensen, was recruited to pull a trailer, filled with the five 55-gallon drums of whitewash needed to do the job, up the hill with his brand new Farmall tractor. As the tractor neared the top, it reached a spot where a fine red sand had been blown in a deep drift over the roadway. The tractor began to lose traction and slip around in that sand. It glided toward the edge of the cliff and finally stopped with one wheel precariously over the edge.
“We worked for quite some time trying to get that tractor back up on the road and to the top,” Robison said. “But it seemed like all our efforts were just get it closer to falling over the edge.”
Finally another adult resident had to drive his old army surplus 4-wheel drive to the top of the mesa on the highway, which then roughly followed the alignment of the current Interstate 15. When he reached a point near the modern day Carp/Elgin exit, he left the highway and travelled south on the mesa, finally making his way down to where the tractor was stuck. Hooking a chain and winch to the tractor, they were finally able to pull it up the hill to safety. It had been an all day project.
“We didn’t get as much whitewashing done that year as usual,” Robison recalled. He explained that the bucket brigade had gotten to work and had been able to convey some of the whitewash over the much longer distance to the site. But it was only enough to allow a small portion of the roughest areas of the ‘M’ to be completed.
Under the best of circumstances, whitewashing the ‘M’ was hot and sweaty work. The students usually ended up with about as much whitewash on them and their clothing as was painted on the hillside. So after the task was complete, the student body took a trip out to Warm Springs where they spent the afternoon swimming at the Pederson’s Ranch resort, which today is the Moapa Valley National Wildlife Refuge.
“We’d always have a nice picnic lunch up there,” remembered Whipple. “It was great fun! I remember one year they had a whole crate of oranges that they threw into the pond. We all had to dive for an orange. That was a real treat for us.”
The “M Day” festivities then continued into the evening and often involved the whole community. Katherine Hannig, daughter of long-time MVHS principal Grant M. Bowler and member of the MVHS class of 1956, remembered that on “M Day” a large flatbed trailer was parked on the north end of the school alongside of what is now the Old Overton Gym. The trailer became the stage for the evening’s entertainment. Students and families would come, sit on the lawn, and watch the show.
Each of the classes at the high school would perform a skit of their own creation on this outdoor stage, Hannig said.
“It was a big community thing; everybody was there,” Hannig said. “Each class would try to outdo each other with their skits. They were all totally original. The kids came up with everything from the script to the sets to the props. And they were so funny! I wish that we had videos of those skits. They were so good.”
After the skits, they would crown the “M Day” queen. Chosen by vote of the student body, the queen and her court would all be wearing formal dresses for the occasion.
At the end of the show, the student body, and many of the community members as well, would proceed into the Old Gym for a dance.
“It was one of the highlights of the year,” Whipple said. “It was a dating affair with a formal dance. But anybody was welcome. It was a really fun activity.”
A lot has changed over the years with this small town community celebration. This week’s festivities at the school are only obliquely related to those former traditions from the past.
The class skit tradition has been replaced by a movie night on the school practice field. On Monday night, students gathered on the lawn to be entertained by the screening of a film, presuamably played by a computer and projected onto a large screen.
Somewhere along the line, the M Queen turned into a Mr. M contest which will be held tomorrow night. This semi-sarcastic variety show, which is modeled somewhat after a beauty pageant, will bring a handful of senior boys into competition for the crown. After displaying their abilities in various categories including talent, question and answer, school dress code fashion, and more; they will be judged by a panel of teachers and a 2015 Mr. M will be awarded.
Because the kids don’t seem to attend dances much anymore, that part of the festivities has been scrapped this year. But there will be a picnic of sorts. The student council will be grilling up hot dogs and hamburgers after school on Friday.
As far as swimming, well that’s a tall order these days in Moapa Valley. Even our own MVHS swim team has to travel to Mesquite to find a place to practice. All the old resorts at Warm Springs have been closed for decades; victims in the efforts to save the dace. The LDS Ranch pool, which was the last one standing, was burned down in the SNWA wildfire several years ago. No organized activities are allowed any more at the Bowman Reservoir. There’s no longer any water at Overton Beach. And the park pools don’t open for several weeks. So the swimming tradition is just not possible.
And what about painting the ‘M’? What about the central purpose of all the celebration in the first place? Well, that is complicated. The attorneys at the Clark County School District have apparently determined that this tradition is a huge liability risk. So it can no longer be done as a school-sanctioned activity.
But the ‘M’ tradition is much too important to allow it to just fade back into the colors of the hillside. So every year a group of the senior class, and a few adult leaders, get together after school on their own time. This year, it will take place quietly next week, due to scheduling conflicts this week. The group will travel in a small caravan of their own vehicles, up the now much wider and safer dugway, to the top of the mesa. When they arrive at the traditional spot, they will mix the whitewash, form a bucket brigade down the hillside and paint the beloved ‘M’, just like in years past. And the tradition will be preserved for another year.
Some may lament the fact that the modern incarnation of M-centered celebrations are on such a smaller scale than they used to be. Certainly, the festival is hardly the community-wide festival that it once was. The realities of the modern world have changed all around it; and things that once were so simple have become so much more complicated. Furthermore, people nowadays just don’t seem to have the time that they had back then. Where has all of our time gone?
In any case, despite all of that, it is gratifying and comforting that this small-town exhibition of school spirit still continues on in what vestiges remain. The ‘M’ still stands out clearly as a symbol of that spirit and community pride, despite all of the obstacles placed in its way. May it continue to do so for many generations to come.
