No, it is not the Sleeping Maiden of Timpanogos. She is far too young and beautiful to be maternal, and, well, she is something of a princess.

Our matriarch’s name is Mother Luna, and her profile emerges serenely from the mountainside east of downtown Provo. Her hair flows into Slide Canyon, the high gap above “Y” Mountain. Her forehead rises above Maple Flat, and her nose, lips and chin form the ridgeline of Slate Canyon. If you’ve really got imagination, you can see the silhouette of her body stretching far southward along the mountaintop.

Mother Luna has occupied her lofty position for untold centuries, long before Brigham Young Academy professor N.L. Nelson noticed in about 1893. Nelson, who taught a class in the effective use of persuasive speech and writing, assigned his students to improvise a legend accounting for Mother Luna’s presence. Most of the scholars agreed that she was a woman who fell from the moon, which accounts for the name Mother Luna.

Creating a legend

Some of the academy’s students may have known about Mother Luna in 1893, but Nelson did not introduce her to the general public until 1899. In the fall of that year, he wrote an article for the Deseret News in which he reported on an institution in Provo that was then called the Utah State Insane Asylum.

Before describing the institution itself, Nelson described its setting at the base of the mountain. In so doing, he revealed the presence of Mother Luna, “the greatest natural curiosity in the West.”

After describing her profile in detail, Nelson made the following comment about her emotional state: “Her whole countenance … betokens oblivion to the things around her and an intense absorption in the things above.

Before turning to the main topic of his article — the state hospital — Nelson made this closing comment about Mother Luna: “Strange coincidence that Mother Luna and Mother Luna’s children (the lunatics) should have come to abide so near each other.”

In the same newspaper article, Nelson made only brief and tantalizing references to the legend concocted by his students. He mentioned Father Luna dropping Mother Luna earthward and wrote that her deep-set eyes were “searching for signs of relenting in the face of her former spouse.” The public had to wait for more details.

Almost two decades later, a young woman named Cleo P. Heavener enrolled in Nelson’s class, where she learned of Mother Luna and Indian legends. Many years later, when Heavener was a teacher and librarian at Provo’s Franklin School, this master storyteller regaled her students with tales of fairies, leprechauns, Alice in Wonderland and — Mother Luna.

Heavener possessed a distinctive and unforgettable personality. She was outwardly brusque (she used to say that her initials, C.P., stood for Cross Patch), but her hard shell covered the marshmallow within. She played the female counterpart to the Daily Herald’s redoubtable city editor, Theron Luke.

When Heavener spoke, students listened, and when students addressed her, they didn’t just call her Mrs. Heavener. It was always Mrs. Heavener, dear.

Heavener made an impression on all students. If she told them that Mother Luna lived on the mountain at the east end of Center Street, they believed her — or else. All of the students at the Franklin School heard about Mother Luna, and all of the students saw her form.

Even the exchange teachers from foreign countries learned of Mother Luna — fell in love with her, actually. When Norman Turner, Irene James and Catherine Wallis, all from England, returned to their native land after teaching at Franklin, they corresponded with Heavener. The trio always gave her the same instructions: “Greet Mother Luna.”

In this manner, Heavener kept the Mother Luna legend alive. Her students compiled the following legend:

Away up on the mountain is Mother Luna.

She used to live in the moon,

With the Man in the Moon.

Mrs. Luna was very cross with the Man in the Moon.

She scolded him too much,

So the Man in the Moon threw her down to the earth.

And there she lay,

Waiting for the moon all day,

Waiting for the dark of night.

When the moon would show his light.

She fell so hard all of her body was buried in the ground.

She lay so long that trees and grass grew on her.

Now she is a mountain.

If you look straight up Center Street, you will see her.

Mother Luna wants the Man in the Moon to love her again.

She wants to look pretty.

In the winter she puts on powder.

In the autumn she puts on rouge.

At Easter time she puts on her Easter bonnet.

When it’s Springtime in the Rockies, she is very beautiful.

A source of recreation

During the second decade of the 20th century, when Heavener was a student at BYU, Mother Luna became an integral part of the school’s social life. In April 1915, the male students of the university decided that as a school project that year, they would improve the trail leading to the big block “Y” on the mountain and extend the path on up the mountain to Maple Flat.

The flat, located on the mountain immediately south of “Y” Mountain, consisted of a level area of about 10 acres complete with shade, grass and water. According to the Provo Post, the students hoped to make this recreation spot more accessible so that it could become “an important adjunct to the social life of the institution.”

The students approached Provo’s Commercial Club (Chamber of Commerce) for help. Members of the Commercial Club realized that the trail would provide mountain climbing for tourists and help advertise the community. From Maple Flat, tourists would have a grand view of the valley and the flat would provide a beautiful setting for a summer hotel.

As the Provo Post put it, “The air is of the purest and the climactic conditions comparable to the best Switzerland has to offer. The inducement to tourists, should the Flat ever be improved, are extremely high.”

For years, Provo men had talked about building a resort on the high flat overlooking the valley. Past plans for accessing the flat included a cogwheel railroad, a tunnel elevator and a cable tramway. However, nothing materialized.

Now there was an opportunity to build a trail to Maple Flat with free labor. The Commercial Club wisely placed its support behind the plan.

Only one obstacle stood in the way: a free right of way through the property on the mountain that was privately owned. Provo mining magnate Jesse Knight and local contractor Sidney H. Belmont owned the land, and both of the men readily consented to grant right of way. Belmont even volunteered the use of one of his teams of horses for one week.

A group of men surveyed the route of the trail and laid out its path in preparation for “Trail Day.” The BYU students and the Provo Commercial Club selected May 19 as the work day, but the weather turned bad and work was postponed. The students voted to try again the following week.

On May 26, 300 male students gathered at the foot of the mountain at 8 a.m. and organized into companies of 20 men. They packed their picks and shovels to the top of Slide Canyon and worked their way down to the “Y.” From that point down, they widened the existing trail to 4 feet and tried to maintain a 20 percent grade to the bottom of the mountain. They finished work at 4 o’clock that afternoon.

In honor of the work contributed by the students, the trail was christened the “Y” Trail.

The trail from the head of Slide Canyon to Maple Flat still needed improvement, but the flat was now much easier to access. Two days after the students completed the work project, a group of Boy Scouts from Provo became the first users of the new trail. The boys camped at Maple Flat for two days.

In early June, the Provo Post reported that the trail had developed “into one of the most prominent walks in and around Provo.” A group of Provo people including BYU coach Eugene Roberts hiked the trail to the flat on June 7. They took along a pair of field glasses and watched their friends on the streets and in the yards below.

Roberts left the group early, and those who stayed on the mountain used the glasses to watch him descend. It took Roberts just 54 minutes to reach his house on 100 East.

At the corner of 500 East Center, the coach stopped, faced the mountain, took off his hat and waved it to his friends. They responded with a cheer that Roberts easily heard.

For more than a decade after the completion of the trail, BYU summer school students made an annual hike to Maple Flat and out onto Mother Luna’s Nose. The first hike was in 1916. One hundred participants gathered on Lower Campus (Academy Square) at 5 a.m. In less than three hours, they were eating their breakfast on Mother Luna’s Nose overlooking Slate Canyon and Provo City. They explored, played games and sang songs for three hours and then began their trek down the mountain.

Summer school students and some townspeople participated in the first annual moonlight hike to Mother Luna’s Nose in 1917. Organizers billed the outing as the first big moonlight hike conducted in the West. This type of hike was very popular in Switzerland. Optimists hoped that the nighttime hike to Mother Luna’s Nose would become as popular and important as the Timp Hike.

After a few years, a regular hike routine evolved. The university held the event during the first term of the summer quarter when the moon was full. Hikers, numbering from 100 to 200, met on campus before the hike and indulged in plays, singing and other activities until 10:30 p.m., when they walked from the school to the base of the mountain.

During their ascent of the steep trail, hikers took frequent rests during which they watched skits, sang songs and played games. The Provo Post gave the following tongue-in-cheek description of the activities the hikers would indulge in after they reached Maple Flat and Mother Luna’s Nose: “Upon the altar of Mother Luna, incense will be burned after the moon worshippers reach its threshold. At the moment of sunrise, a sun dance accompanied by the beating of tom toms and devout chanting of college yells will be started.”

After watching the sunrise from the tip of Mother Luna’s Nose, the group roasted wieners for breakfast, indulged in more singing and games, then started back down the mountain. They usually arrived home before noon.

A memorable hike

In 1924, a program committee chaired by Provo resident Ruth Louise Partridge staged what must have been BYU’s most memorable moonlight hike. Just as the hikers reached the trailhead, a young Indian maiden wearing what the newspapers described as “full native costume” sang several Indian songs and “bade the moon worshippers welcome to the moonlit heights of her mountains.” One of the hikers, Vivian Peterson, responded “by leading the group in cheers and pep songs.”

As they climbed higher, the “moonshiners” heard majestic strains of music played by a brass quartet that was concealed in the brush near the ledges above them.

At a rock outcropping the students called Sentinel Point, Harlan Adams told an eerie ghost story. As the tale reached its most exciting point, two grotesque skeletal forms cavorted through the nearby cliffs. This experience emotionally unsettled several hikers, and they turned back.

To many townspeople, the most disturbing news was that this moonlight hike took place on a Saturday night, and many students stayed in the mountains until late Sunday afternoon playing games, performing stunts and singing songs. These naughty revelers missed some of their church meetings.

During the late 1920s, the BYU tradition of taking moonlight hikes to Mother Luna’s Nose died out. Perhaps the annual Timpanogos Hike and the tramps through the forest near Aspen Grove, which served as BYU’s summer school headquarters, satisfied the students’ urge to commune with nature.

After the hikes to Mother Luna’s Nose ceased, residents of the valley almost forgot about the city’s matron, the stone face that professor N.L. Nelson called “the greatest natural curiosity in the West.”

However, former BYU students like Cleo P. Heavener kept the legend alive by passing it on to succeeding generations. Partridge, who participated in several of the moonlight hikes and helped to plan one of them, kept Mother Luna in the public mind via a letter to the editor of the Daily Herald. Partridge wrote:

“Once you see this remarkable natural sculpture, you wonder how you ever missed it. It is by far the plainest, most spectacular of all the human features found in nature that I have ever seen. The poet’s ‘Great Stone Face’ is obscure in comparison. Only the man-made sculptures on Mt. Rushmore are better done.”

At the current time, others help perpetuate the Luna legend. Jack Hopkinson acts as Provo’s leading Lunaphile. Concerning his long-lasting affair with the mountainous mother, Hopkinson recently said, ” I have watched her like a pretty girl at the junior prom since I was 6 years old. In autumn, colored leaves tint her hair. The snow in winter powders her cheeks.”

Hopkinson remembers when he first met Mother Luna. One brisk winter morning when Jack was a 6-year-old boy bedridden with a crippling bone disease, the family physician made a house call (a clue as to how long ago that was).

As the doctor looked out of the slightly steamed window of Jack’s room, he asked the sick boy if he had ever seen Mother Luna’s Nose. The doctor pointed it out to his young patient and traced its outline on the window with his finger.

Jack spent a lot of time looking out of that window, and soon he discerned that the nose was attached to a face. He was smitten with Mother Luna’s charms and has never forgotten that face. He extols her virtues with the zeal of a missionary and never passes up an opportunity to point out her profile.

Hopkinson has taught an LDS Primary class for nearly 18 years. Each year he helps perpetuate the legend of Mother Luna by taking his class on a field trip to the top level of the Marriott parking terrace. From this viewpoint, he points out Mother Luna’s form and tells her story.

Asked to comment on Luna’s main rival, the Sleeping Maiden of Timpanogos, Hopkinson replied, “To me, she looks more like a mummy than a mommy.”

For more than 100 years, Mother Luna has provided Provo residents with a sense of belonging to the community and with feelings of comfort and security.

Today is Mother’s Day. Why not give your regards to Mother Lunafi

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page B2.