The Number Mountain

Growing up in the Lost River Valley just north of Arco Idaho had a couple of unique features. Arco was the first community in the world ever to be lit by electricity generated by nuclear power on July 17, 1955, from the nearby National Reactor Testing Station. My Dad was an Health Physicist at the Site as we always called it. The other was called the number mountain. The painting of our class number was something that was planned for as soon as you became a freshman. We would talk about what area on the mountain would be the best spot to put our number "72". The number is the year we would graduate from high school. It took a couple of days to paint the number. I wish I could remember more details about the painting process.

You can see my number to the left of the 44 which was year my Mom graduated from Arco.

This last picture shows the oldest numbers that I was ever able to find "21 and 21". The "A" stands for Arco and the "B" for Butte county.