Viewmont High unearths mysterious painted boulder
A painted rock that was uncovered during construction is currently located near the parking lot on Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2016 at Viewmont High School in Bountiful. Viewmont High Principal Jason Smith, a Viewmont High alumnus, was told that it may have been part of a class prank many years ago.
A painted rock that was uncovered during construction is currently located near the parking lot on Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2016 at Viewmont High School in Bountiful. Viewmont High Principal Jason Smith, a Viewmont High alumnus, was told that it may have been part of a class prank many years ago.
A painted rock that was uncovered during construction is currently located near the parking lot on Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2016 at Viewmont High School in Bountiful. Viewmont High Principal Jason Smith, a Viewmont High alumnus, was told that it may have been part of a class prank many years ago.
A painted rock that was uncovered during construction is currently located near the parking lot on Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2016 at Viewmont High School in Bountiful. Viewmont High Principal Jason Smith, a Viewmont High alumnus, was told that it may have been part of a class prank many years ago.
BOUNTIFUL — It’s big, cumbersome, heavy, and Viewmont High School officials don’t know for sure how it got there.
During an ongoing remodel and addition project at Viewmont this year, construction workers made a discovery and reached out to Principal Jason Smith.
They had come across a massive rock buried beneath a sidewalk on the side of the building, but it wasn’t just any rock.
The behemoth was clearly slathered with red, gold and orange paint and while a lot of it is worn off, the figures “19” or something close to, it can be seen on one side.
“It looks like a big old boulder with dirt on it but you can see it’s clearly been painted,” Smith said.
Where did it come from? What was its story? What does its presence mean and why was it underground?
While he’s not sure about the accuracy of the story he put together, Smith has a tentative theory.
Decades ago, the school celebrated “Rag-n-Rok Week,” something Smith said was a reference to Viking lore in honor of the school’s mascot. Ragnarok is the end of the world in Norse mythology.
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BRIANA SCROGGINS/Standard-Examiner
A painted rock that was uncovered during construction is currently located near the parking lot on Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2016 at Viewmont High School in Bountiful. Viewmont High Principal Jason Smith, a Viewmont High alumnus, was told that it may have been part of a class prank many years ago.
During that week, classes would compete against each other to earn points. The winner each year would get to paint a large rock in the school’s lawn.
“The story goes, if it’s true, seniors typically won and (one year) the seniors got beat and before the winning class could paint the rock, it disappeared,” Smith said.
If that’s really what happened, it would have taken a lot of muscle.
“This rock is huge,” Smiths said. “How they buried it and moved it, I don’t know.”
Smith’s theory comes from Roger Cushing, who taught at the school from 1970 to 1989.
Cushing said he remembers the rock being inside the school where the senior class would paint it annually for Rag-n-Rock until one year — he’s not sure when — it simply disappeared.
“It couldn’t be lifted by hand,” he said. “They had to have a backhoe or something”
Viewmont Alumni Association President Doug Smith graduated in 1976 and said he hadn’t heard of the rock until Smith brought it up at a meeting after it was unearthed. Other alumni association members who had graduated in the 1970s and late 1990s didn’t know anything either.
“None of us remembered the rock itself but we definitely remembered Rag-n-Rok Week and the rock would fit,” he said.
Greg Oman, class of 1973, also doesn’t know the story of the rock. Neither does Chris Brown, class of 1966, the school’s first to graduate.
“I’ve talked to a few people in our class and it was after our time,” she said.
“I started teaching here in the fall of 1986 and honestly I don’t know anything about it,” Viewmont physical education teacher Roger Farnsworth said.
If Smith’s story has any truth to it, the long con really paid off. Smith said current students sometimes come out to marvel at the rock and he’s debating where to put it once the school’s renovation and addition is finished.
“I’m toying with ideas for when the project is done where can we put it and tell the story,” he said. “I want the rock to be a part of the school again.”
If you have any information about the rock and the story behind it, please contact Standard-Examiner reporter Anna Burleson at aburleson@standard.net or (801) 625-4274. She’s also on Twitter at @AnnagatorB and on Facebook at Facebook.com/BurlesonReports.