Community Over Crisis: Pleasant Grove mountainside lights up with hope

PLEASANT GROVE, Utah (ABC4 News) – If you have been driving through Utah County recently, you have probably noticed some new lights on the mountainside above Pleasant Grove. These newly placed lights are a community effort to bring light and hope to Utah amid the coronavirus outbreak.

The newly placed lights on the hill were installed by David Hartle. For the past few years, Hartle has taken it upon himself to put different light designs on the Pleasant Grove mountainside.

“Whenever I do any of the light projects, it is for the community, it’s to bring people together, it is to make people smile,” says Hartle. “I want them to look up and be able to enjoy something and take their mind off of everything else that is going on.”

Hartle says since a lot of kids are bored at home right now, he came up with the idea to put a contest out on a few different Pleasant Grove community Facebook pages. Hartle had kids submit their light designs for the mountainside and then the community voted for their favorite design.

Hartle received dozens of light design submissions. The winning design? Utah with a heart inside of it, created by 14-year-old Leigha Squire.

“I got the idea of the design because I felt like since everybody is kind of locked inside of their houses and probably low on hope, I thought what’s a better way to give hope than to show hope through our state?” says Squire.

“I love Utah,” says Squire. “It is really cool to see that my (design on the mountainside) is actually making people happy.”

Squire says that she hopes it brings people happiness through this hard time saying, “I hope people feel hope and that they know that they can get through the whole coronavirus situation.”

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