Golden, Colorado - M-blem - Giant Letter on Mountainside
This is the world's largest lighted letter, signifying its allegiance to the Colorado School of Mines. It is a large letter "M" atop the face of Mt. Zion overlooking Golden, made of whitewashed rocks, and measures 104x107 feet, each leg measuring 10 feet wide. Every fall incoming freshmen bring new rocks up here to add to the M, whitewashing the rocks and themselves, and every spring graduating seniors come up here and get to take one of the rocks with them. The M was designed by CSM professor Joseph Francis O'Byrne in 1908 as an extremely difficult problem in descriptive geometry, and he succeeded in creating a letter that does not appear distorted from any angle. It is the second-oldest college letter monument in the nation only to the University of Utah's "U". It rests at 6,900 feet above sea level, on a slope of 23 degrees. CSM rivals have attempted to destroy it but they were not as well versed in explosives as the Miners. In 1931 the M was lit for the first time, and it has been continuously lit since March 19, 1932. Every holiday season since 1935 it has lit in red. Today its lighting system can turn the M into all sorts of creative color and shape arrangements at night, controlled from campus via telephone modem. It even counts down the days until the end of the semester. [Richard J. Gardner, 11/25/2003]
"I'm sure that my "M" is so much cooler than your "M". Actually...it looks amazingly similar.
Ask a local "M" is for "Mountain". =-] No, actually, it's for "Mines" the Colorado School of Mines. Visible from Denver, lit up at night, the "M" on the side of Mount Zion is BIG. How did it get there, you may wonder. Funny you should ask...
Every year the freshmen at the Colorado School of Mines embark on a voluntary torture test called the "M" Climb. You are required to go out the couple days before and find yourself a 10 lb rock. If you are built like a football player and come with only a 7 lb rock, a 20 lb rock will be assigned to you. I (silly me) found myself a 20lb rock. Oops.
You take your rock and climb up the hill carrying it (no backpacks allowed) singing the school fight song, repeatedly, and wearing the hard hat you were given the day before (corresponds to your class color), and being painted and mocked by upperclassmen all the way. Upon reaching the "M" (a 940' change in elevation, if you stop at the bottom), you place your rock on the M with those already present. But alas! Your rock is rock colored and the M rocks are white! So, the freshmen must whitewash each other...I mean the rocks...
Graduating seniors may DRIVE up the hill (learned their lesson by then) and retrieve a rock (I found my original, but left it...that thing was HUGE...took a smaller one) and whitewash the M one last time.
You Denver-area-peeps have probably seen the M before, but I bet you didn't know that (well...Mines students should).
The M is fenced in, but you can get close by car and a little hike. A pic of it from the road or outside the fence will suffice." from Waymark (
visit link) .