OGDEN -- On the chance you're wondering how to get a mountain named after you, try this.
Help build it.
Such as the mound threatening to grow 25 feet high in the yard next to the visitor's center of the Ogden Nature Center, the 155-acre preserve holding its position as the subdivisions circle in Ogden's northwest corner.
"We are, we're building a mountain out of a mole hill, there are mice and moles and their burrows all over this area," said Cheyenne Herland, part of the center's six-member education staff, as she watched the mountain-, well, hill-building Saturday.
Molehill Mountain?
The whole thing is the Eagle Scout project of Braeden Furgeson, a 17-year-old Fremont High School senior and budding engineering student. "I'll be 18 in August."
Braeden Peak?
Saturday, he was guiding a group of about 30 contractors from all over the United States in sculpting the emerging mountain south of the visitor's center.
It just happens construction giant MWH Global Inc. was having a conference in Ogden over the weekend. So project managers and superintendents were wielding shovels and rakes and cameras as part of their regular donation of community service.
"This is a way to give back to the community," said Willie Nowotny, an MWH official from Tampa, Fla., acting as MWH spokesman. "We like to bring the guys out and work."
The company donated 40 truckloads of dirt from their construction site in West Weber two weeks ago to get the hill started.
The MWH guys also passed the hat at the end of the day to donate $250 to Furgeson for the project. "It was all in cash," he said.
Mount MWH? It's named for founders Montgomery, Watson and Harza. Might not work.
The wife of Furgeson's scoutmaster, Don Spencer, works in one of MWH's offices in Utah, hence the connection. Spencer called Furgeson's brainchild the most ambitious he's seen in his Scouting days. "In 30 years I've never seen anything like it."
A local plant for Old Castle Precast, a national firm that molds concrete, donated 40 feet of culvert so Furgeson could run a tunnel through the base of the mountain.
Old Castle Hill?
Friends of the Furgeson family, Jeff Hales and son Tyson, a father-son realtor team who do construction work on the side, fired up their back-hoe and track-hoe and donated their time to get the cement culverts and mounds of soil roughed in as a mountain.
Hales Hill?
The project will be part of the Outdoors Discovery Area under construction at the nature center. Plans include such amenities as an Energy Garden with a solar-powered water fountain and a jumping pit where children can measure their leaps against those of animals in the wild. School tours on the grounds, mingling with the wild turkeys and the domesticated pelican who loiter in the same area, are a big part of the nature center's mission.
"The children who visit are going to love it," said Susan Snyder, a member of the nature center education staff. "We have wanted a hill that kids can roll around on forever."
Kid Roll Hill?
Furgeson said he picked the nature center because it regularly hosts Eagle Scout projects. "I e-mailed them for ideas and they sent me a list of projects they wanted done. It was like 'sod the roof' and other stuff and one said 'build a mountain.' And I thought, yeah, build a mountain."
Whatever its name turns out to be, it's still under construction, its scope limited only by the donations Furgeson can secure.
His vision includes a pump-driven spring on one side of the hill, a drip irrigation system for the whole edifice, flora to include several dozen trees, and landscape boulders.
The pump will likely cost up to $700, and the boulders up to $1,000 "depending on how many rocks I can get," Furgeson said. He's in negotiations with a local construction company which has so far agreed to donate the delivery cost, but not the boulders themselves. Jerry's Nursery in Farr West has agreed to knock more than 10 percent off the price of about 24 trees for a total bill of around $2,000.
Jerry Hill?
"Good question," Furgeson said as to the completion date. "Depends on how the donations come in."
Those wanting to get involved can contact Furgeson at (801) 391-1355 or the Ogden Nature Center at (801) 621-7595.
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