PALMYRA, New York — In 1936, one year after President Heber J. Grant dedicated a monument featuring a statue of the angel Moroni atop the Hill Cumorah, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints built and dedicated a bureau of information at the site to provide visitors with a place to learn more about the Church and the sacred events of the Restoration.
The bureau of information was replaced with a visitors’ center in 2002, according to ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
As the historic site nearest to New York’s Interstate 90, the Hill Cumorah Visitors’ Center was originally designed to serve as “a gateway experience” that oriented visitors to all historic sites in the area tied to key events in the early Church, starting with the First Vision and ending with the organization of the Church, said Benjamin Pykles, director of the Church History Department’s Historic Sites Division.
But the concept didn’t function as hoped. Visitors sometimes bypassed the visitors’ center and went straight to the other sites. Some who did stop at the center left without exploring or appreciating the Hill Cumorah itself.
“They would see the exhibits and never go out onto the hill itself because they thought there wasn’t much to see out there. You can drive up to the top and see the monument, but otherwise they thought ‘It’s just a grassy hillside where they put on the pageant,’” Pykles said.
The Church hopes a newly remodeled Hill Cumorah Visitors’ Center, combined with efforts to return the hill to how it appeared when Joseph Smith walked there in the 1820s, will provide a more significant and spiritual experience.
Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles will preside at a rededication event at the Hill Cumorah Historic Site on Sunday, Sept. 21.
“We want to give them something more meaningful about the Hill Cumorah and help them understand its spiritual significance. We also want the visitors’ center to support the on-site experience,” Pykles said. “The Book of Mormon, which came forth out of that hill, testifies to the whole world that Jesus is the Christ, that He is the Savior of the world. There is a wonderful message that we’re trying to deliver there, and we think visitors are appreciating it.”
This is “a new chapter” in the history of the Hill Cumorah, said Sam Palfreyman, the Church’s Historic Sites manager for New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont.
“I really hope that we can all feel that this is a new chapter,” he said. “This is sacred ground that witnesses of Jesus Christ and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, which testifies of Him.”
The 1935 dedication
A crowd of more than 2,000 people attended as President Heber J. Grant dedicated a monument featuring a statue of the angel Moroni on the Hill Cumorah on July 21, 1935, according to Church News reports.
“There is no monument in the world today with which greater things are associated,” said President David O. McKay, who then served as second counselor in the First Presidency.
Elder Joseph Fielding Smith, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve and Church historian, wrote of the Hill Cumorah in a Church News article on July 20, 1935: “This spot is one of considerable sanctity to all members of the Church.”
Returning home from the mission field, future Church President Gordon B. Hinckley and four other missionaries caught a ride with a reporter to the Hill Cumorah, arriving just in time for the dedication and unveiling of the statue of the monument, according to a Church News article.
Torlief S. Knaphus, a Norwegian convert, designed and sculpted the 10-foot statue of the angel Moroni that tops the monument. He also sculpted the four plaques at the monument’s base that bear the images of the Prophet Joseph Smith, the 11 witnesses of the gold plates and Moroni’s exhortation in Moroni 10:4.
The 2002 visitors’ center
Sixty-seven years after he attended the dedication, President Hinckley dedicated a new visitors’ center at the base of the Hill Cumorah on July 1, 2002.
Some 110 invited guests — all who could fit into the building’s auditorium — attended the ceremony.
President Hinckley, who had just dedicated the Nauvoo Illinois Temple days earlier, said he had visited the Hill Cumorah many times and was “always intrigued and fascinated with the significance of the wonderful things that occurred here,” he said.
“There is nothing like it anywhere else in the history of the world, really, when all is said and done, to reflect on the fact that the Father and the Son appeared to the boy Joseph and spoke to him. The curtains were parted after centuries of darkness to open a new dispensation, the dispensation of the fulness of times when all of the previous dispensations should be gathered together in one.”
‘Sacred historic site’
The Hill Cumorah Pageant played a significant role in the history and legacy of the Hill Cumorah.
It started in the 1920s as a missionary conference and skit and evolved into a formal pageant that dramatized and celebrated the important events of the Book of Mormon. The production took place a few weeks a year from 1937 to 2019.
Pykles acknowledged that while the pageant blessed many lives and did a lot of good, people thought of the Hill Cumorah more as a performance venue.
“I suspect that if you had asked most Church members that knew about the Hill Cumorah, they would identify it as ‘That’s where they put on the pageant,’” he said. " What had maybe been lost a little bit is the hill’s identity as a sacred historic site of the Restoration."
When Church leaders decided to discontinue the pageant in 2018, a plan to rehabilitate the hill and its visitors’ center was proposed so “it could take on its identity as a sacred historic site of the Restoration,” Pykles said.
Starting in 2021, all facilities, roads and parking areas used to support the pageant were removed from the hill. The Church then initiated a forest restoration and conservation program to regenerate a more healthy and mature grove and landscape similar to the Sacred Grove.
While it will take decades for the hill to regenerate, a new trail allows visitors to walk into the old-growth forest on the south end of the hill “so they can experience a portion of the hill like it would have been in Joseph’s time,” Pykles said.
The Angel Moroni statue on the monument has also been regilded for the first time since 1935 for a new, shiny appearance.
The new visitors’ center
The visitors’ center was remodeled and designed with exhibits and artwork that focus on Jesus Christ, the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and sacred events of the hill. Missionaries are encouraged to interact with visitors but the site experience is self-guided. The new center opened to the public in May.
Along one wall, three large oil paintings depict Joseph Smith and Moroni at the hill.
There are interactive exhibits to help guests learn more about Church history and the gospel.
An exhibit called “The Book of Mormon Experience” allows guests to read, highlight and reflect on a page of Book of Mormon scripture that came forth from the hill. There are also coloring pages for children.
A main feature arranged in the center’s rotunda is a multifigure bronze sculptural piece depicting Jesus Christ visiting the Americas. The statuary is interactive, and visitors are encouraged to go up and touch the marks in the Savior’s hands. Behind the statue of the Savior on the wall are words of 3 Nephi 11.
President Thomas McCoy and his wife, Sister Lani McCoy, who serve as leaders for the New York and Pennsylvania Historic Sites, have observed many visitors, especially children, have “powerful” experiences interacting with the statue of the Savior.
“They touch his hands. They touch his feet. They’re feeling something,” Sister McCoy said. “We have had personal experiences with it as well.”
On another wall, visitors will see the words, “Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, manifesting Himself to all nations,” in all the languages of the Book of Mormon. President McCoy told about sister missionaries recently having the opportunity to testify and hand out Portuguese copies of the Book of Mormon to a group of visitors from Brazil.
“The focus here is on the Hill Cumorah and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon,” he said. “We’ve had some marvelous experiences with people that aren’t members of our faith coming in here.”
Having observed the changes at the site since February 2024, the McCoys hope those who come will take time for an “immersive” experience. They said there is a new, refreshing feeling at the Hill Cumorah Historic Site.
Sisters Ivy Colbert and Brooklyn Bement, missionaries who currently serve at the New York and Pennsylvania Historic Sites, added that the new visitors’ center allows visitors to have a more personal understanding of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and the Savior Jesus Christ.
“Having those statues, having those paintings that help show what actually happened, and having it be more of a self-guided experience too, really provides that personal relationship of what the Book of Mormon has done for each individual,” Sister Colbert said.
Added Sister Bement: “These truly are sacred sites, and it’s been really special getting to spend so much time here and learn so much about the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
