The falcon on empty ground
Skyridge High School in Lehi opened in August 2016 after a 2011 bond measure and a 2014 groundbreaking, on ground that had been empty. The land lies near the site of the 1849 killings at Battle Creek Canyon and the defensive wall later built at American Fork against feared Timpanogos reprisal.
Voters funded a high school that did not yet exist
Voters in the Skyridge High School passed a bond in 2011 to build a new high school. There was no school here yet. There was barely a neighborhood.
Crews broke ground in 2014. Two years later, in August 2016, the doors opened on a building that had not existed when the bond passed. A grant in 2015 paid for a driver's education range. Students could learn to drive on school property before they ever touched a real road.
The school picked a mascot before it had much else. A falcon named Flash became the face of a place that was, at that point, mostly steel and drywall and a parking lot.
A young school won five straight state tennis titles
Skyridge did not wait long to start winning. The girls' tennis team took the state title in 2020, then again in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024, five years running. The football team won its own state championship in 2022. Boys' cross country took it in 2020, boys' swimming in both 2023 and 2024, competitive cheer in 2023, and lacrosse more recently still.
None of that was inherited. A school with a decade of existence built a run of championships almost as fast as it built its hallways. The falcon on the gym wall predates most of what it now stands for.
Settlers killed four Timpanogos men and named the ground Battle Creek
The land Skyridge now sits on was empty ground long before it was a bond measure. Two miles south, about 35 Mormon settlers rode into Battle Creek Canyon. They killed four Timpanogos Ute men. Brigham Young had ordered the attack after accusations of cattle theft. Settlers named their new town after that killing. They called it Battle Creek.
The name did not last. Later residents renamed it Pleasant Grove, after the cottonwoods that grew there. The older name fell out of use. The Timpanogos had their own name for the area: Mepha, meaning Little Waters. None of the three names survives on a street sign today.
American Fork built a 12-foot wall against feared reprisal
Fear did not end with the new name. Settlers at American Fork, a few miles from where Skyridge now stands, built a 12-foot wall around their township. Militia commander Daniel H. Wells ordered the work. They expected Timpanogos reprisal for the killings at Battle Creek. The wall went up in pieces, incomplete in places, finished in others. A town built defensively before it had proper streets or stores.
Lehi-born artists made their careers far from home
James Taylor Harwood was born in Lehi in 1860. He grew up to become one of Utah's notable etchers and painters. He trained abroad and exhibited far from his birthplace. Lehi-born artists and leaders formed a small cluster. Their careers played out somewhere else entirely. Their names are now attached to galleries and pulpits and legislatures far past the town line.
A Lehi-born runner competed nationally before returning to die
Paul Cummings went further than most. He was born in Lehi in 1953. He became a distance runner who competed at a national level. He spent his career on tracks and courses well outside Utah County. He died in Lehi in 2001, back in the town he'd left decades earlier to run.
The falcon on the gym wall watches a town that keeps building new ground over old names.
Every person, building and event in this story opens into its own dig in the app — and Strata will dig the ground under your feet instead, wherever that is, in about a minute, with every source shown.