Hill Cumorah Trails and Forest

On the night of September 21, 1823, Joseph Smith first encountered the angel who introduced himself as Moroni. On that night, Joseph also received a vision of a stone box on a nearby hill where the ancient record of Moroni’s people was kept. Joseph later described the hill as being “of considerable size, and the most elevated of any in the neighborhood.”

Known today as the Hill Cumorah, this glacial drumlin is the largest hill in the region. For twenty years or more before Joseph arrived, the local farmers had developed the land by removing trees to create grazing lands and planting gardens at its base. After Joseph Smith completed his annual visits to the hill between 1823 and 1827 and received the plates, the hill continued to be used for agriculture. Nearly a century after the sacred events of the 1820s when photographers first captured images of the hill, the top was almost completely bare. When the Church purchased the property in 1928, the native woodlands had been reduced to a few small patches on one side.

In the 1930s, Willard and Rebecca Bean, caretakers of the Church’s properties in the area, planted 65,000 evergreens received from the New York State Conservation Department. With help from their family, local members and missionaries, and a few hired hands, they planted the evergreens and 3,000 seedlings transplanted from the outskirts of the Sacred Grove.

As those trees grew, they formed a natural backdrop for a large pageant that began in 1935. Between 1935 and 2019, a large stage was built on the hill’s western slope and many buildings needed to support the expanding production were added. A large seating area was also created and kept free of trees at the base of the stage.

With the closing of the pageant in 2020, a second opportunity to restore the landscape arose. More than 20 pageant-related buildings, stages, and other structures were removed. In their place, new walking paths were built through newly planted meadows of native grasses, where trees are beginning to take root. Visitors walking the trails today, and in the future, can discover a quiet, forest setting.

360° Walkthrough

What to Expect

There are multiple different trails that lead from the visitors’ center to the Hill Cumorah. There are shorter trails that are about 0.1-mile round trip that are steeper and have some steps. There are also longer trails that go through the forest that are about 0.2 miles long round trip. Guests can request to be taken up the hill in a golf cart.