page_title: Cumorah
section_title: New York
hierarchical_section_title: Cumorah / New York
caption_attribution_description: The statue of Moroni atop Hill Cumorah in Palmyra New York.
context_page_description: Cumorah is a drumlin in Manchester, New York, United States, where Joseph Smith said he found a set of golden plates which he translated into English and published as the Book of Mormon.
  In the text of the Book of Mormon, "Cumorah" is a hill located in a land of the same name, which is "a land of many waters, rivers and fountains". In this hill, a Book of Mormon figure, Mormon, deposited a number of metal plates containing the record of his nation of Nephites, just prior to their final battle with the Lamanites in which at least 230,000 people were killed.
  Early Latter Day Saints assumed that the Cumorah in New York was the same Cumorah described in the Book of Mormon, based largely on a letter written by Oliver Cowdery, published in the July 1835 Messenger and Advocate and reprinted several times at the direction of Joseph Smith, but in the early-20th century, scholars from the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began to speculate that there were two such hills and that final battle in the Book of Mormon took place on a hill in southern Mexico, Central America, or South America.
context_section_description: The hill named Cumorah in Manchester, New York (coordinates: 43.0062°N 77.224°W) is where Smith said he discovered the golden plates which contained the writings of the Book of Mormon. Smith wrote: "On the west side of this hill, not far from the top, under a stone of considerable size, lay the plates, deposited in a stone box."
  Smith visited the hill each year on September 22 between 1823 and 1827 and said he was instructed by a "holy messenger", whom Smith identified as the Angel Moroni. Smith was finally allowed to take the record on September 22, 1827. Eleven other men gave written testimony that they had also seen the plates and held them in their hands.
  The hill, which was unnamed prior to 1829, is situated a few miles from Smith's boyhood home on a farm that was then owned by a local farmer, Alonzo Sanders. This farm was 4 miles (6.4 km) south of Palmyra, on the main road toward Canandaigua from Palmyra to Manchester, and is not far from Carangrie Creek and the Clyde River. According to geologists, the hill was formed during the retreat of the Ice Age glaciers, and it rises approximately 110 feet (34 m) above the surrounding valley floor.
  Since 1829, the Latter Day Saints have called the hill "Cumorah", and local non-Mormons have called it "Mormon Hill" or "Gold Bible Hill". The hill has also been called "Inspiration Point". The hill and surrounding land was purchased in the 1920s by the LDS Church under the direction of church president Heber J. Grant. The transaction involved two separate purchases: the purchase of the "Inglis farm"; and the purchase of the "Sexton farm". The Inglis farm consisted of 96 acres (39 ha) on both sides of the Canandaigua–Palmyra road and encompassed one third of the western edge of the hill. The 187-acre (76 ha) Sexton farm was purchased from the heirs of Pliny T. Sexton, who owned the "Mormon Hill farm" encompassing the remainder of the hill.
  The LDS Church has constructed a monument that is topped with a statue of the Angel Moroni on the top of the hill, and there is a visitor's interpretative center at the base of the hill.
caption: The statue of Moroni atop Hill Cumorah in Western New York.
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