Why there's an M on the mountain

You can see the M from all over town. It sits on the lower slope of Mount Baldy at the south end of the Bridgers, a big white letter on a dry hillside, and if you've lived here more than a week you've probably hiked to it, or at least promised someone you would. It's also how this newsletter says goodbye. So here's the story of how the M got up there, and it starts with a bunch of sophomores who really wanted to leave a mark.

The M before the M: a class that liked to win

In the fall of 1915, the school on the hill south of town was called Montana State College, and the class of 1918 had just become sophomores. According to Bozeman Magazine, in a 2021 history by Rachel Phillips of the Gallatin History Museum, the class had close to a hundred students that year and a real taste for competition. Freshmen had to wear green beanies, and the sophomores enforced it with real enthusiasm.

The big event that fall was the annual freshman and sophomore tug-of-war over the campus frog pond. Bozeman Magazine reports that it happened on Friday, Oct 1, 1915, and that the student paper, the Weekly Exponent, counted "a thousand college students and townspeople" watching. It lasted about three minutes before the first freshman went into the water. The class of 1918 won for the second year running.

Picking a hillside for the M

A tug-of-war only lasts one afternoon, and the class of 1918 wanted something that would last longer. MSU's history of the M, which reprints the account from the 1918 Montanan yearbook, says the class wanted "an enduring monument" to its loyalty and an example for the classes after it.

Bozeman Magazine says the first published mention of the idea came in the Exponent on Oct 15, 1915, when a student named Edward Preston proposed putting a big letter M on "some conspicuous hill or mountain." The spot they chose was Baldy. Both MSU's account and Bozeman Magazine say it was picked because it could be seen from campus and town, and Bozeman Magazine adds that there was plenty of loose rock nearby to build with.

Both accounts agree that a five-person survey party climbed the slope with a transit and tape and staked out the outline. Bozeman Magazine names them as Preston, Borton, Kuhns, Streets and Thomas.

Building the M in a day

Then the sophomores got a day off from class to build it. MSU's account says nearly sixty of them headed out to the Fish Hatchery by bicycle, buggy and automobile. Bozeman Magazine, working from the Exponent, puts the work day at Oct 25, 1915, and counts fifty students hauling rock that morning, so the headcount depends on who you ask.

What they did is the same in both versions. They carried slabs of limestone from the surrounding slope, filled the staked outline with big rocks first, and packed smaller ones inside. Bozeman Magazine says they worked in teams and bucket brigades, and that the Exponent admitted there were some close calls with falling rock. By sundown the letter was mostly filled in, and the class celebrated with food and a bonfire in Bridger Canyon. MSU's account adds that the women of the class spent the day cooking the evening meal.

Whitewashing the M in the spring

Rock on a hillside isn't much to look at until it's white, and whitewash meant hauling water and lime up a steep hill. Winter shut that down. On May 8, 1916, the sophomores came back. Both MSU's account and Bozeman Magazine give that date.

They added rock to the part left unfinished in the fall, then painted it. The yearbook account describes them "staggering up the mountain loaded with pails of water, lime and other equipment," with a whitewash gang spraying it on as each section was done. Bozeman Magazine says someone found a spring nearby, which saved a lot of bucket trips, and that the spray pump came from the college greenhouse. The day ended with another picnic and bonfire, and then the class packed into a big truck to go home. The Exponent said 49 of them rode back that way, and anyone standing near the rope across the back was "in danger of being forcibly amputated at the waistline."

How big is the M?

This is the one place the sources don't line up. The 1918 yearbook, as MSU reprints it, says the M is 240 feet high and 100 feet across the legs. Bozeman Magazine quotes the Exponent of May 12, 1916, with the same numbers: "two hundred and forty feet high by one hundred feet between the legs." Those two period accounts agree on 240 feet. MSU's main M page today says 250 feet. Bozeman Magazine also notes that back in October 1915 the students were planning for about 250, so the bigger number may be the plan and the smaller one the finished letter. I can't settle it, so I'll just say that the people who built it wrote down 240.

The students also bragged. Bozeman Magazine says they claimed it was the biggest letter in the world, pointing out that the University of Utah's U was only 100 feet tall. I'm leaving that one as their claim.

Keeping the M white

The M has needed upkeep ever since, and students have done it. MSU says that by its 100th anniversary in 2015, time had worn away so many rocks that students refreshing the letter were often painting dirt. For the centennial, MSU says, Central Helicopters airlifted four pallets of rock, about four tons, up to the slope. Volunteers spread the rock across the letter, and then 100 MSU freshmen painted it.

It hasn't always stayed an M, either. Bozeman Magazine says that in the late 1970s a Bozeman Senior High class turned it into an H for "Hawks." It went back.

The M now

The class of 1918 didn't get the easy finish they probably pictured. Bozeman Magazine says World War I and the flu pandemic cut into their college years, and of the five students who surveyed the M, only one, Rubert Streets, graduated with the class. The letter they hauled up Baldy in two long days is still there, though.

The yearbook closed its account with a line MSU still quotes on its M page: "May the M stand long as a symbol of our loyalty to Montana State and a reminder of what a united class can accomplish." A hundred and ten years later, it's on the hill above town every time you look up, and it's how I sign off every week.

See you at the M.