A falcon named Flash and ten years of state titles

A bond election turned farmland into a high school

In 2011, Alpine School District asked voters to approve a bond. Part of the money went toward a new high school on Lehi's north side. Ground broke in 2014. Two years later, in August 2016, Skyridge High School opened for its first students. The land had been open countryside for generations. Farm families like the Evanses and Harwoods once lived and worked here. Now it held classrooms, a gym, and a mascot: a falcon named Flash, in burnt orange and steel gray. In 2015 the school had already picked up a grant to build a driver's education range, before a single class had graduated.

State titles arrived within two years of opening

It did not take long. Skyridge's girls volleyball team won a state championship in 2018, just two years after the building opened. Football followed in 2022. Competitive cheer and boys swimming both took state titles in 2023, and the girls tennis team won five years running, from 2020 through 2024. The list kept growing: boys cross country in 2020, boys swimming again in 2024, and a boys lacrosse title recorded for 2026.

The athletes went further than the state line. McCae Hillstead left Skyridge to play quarterback for the BYU Cougars. Smith Snowden went from Skyridge's football program to cornerback for the Utah Utes. Patrick Hoopes carried the school's name into gymnastics, becoming a two-time NCAA pommel horse champion. None of them had a program to join before 2016. All of them found one waiting, built fresh on ground that used to grow hay and grain outside a small Utah town.

A settler killed a Ute man over a shirt

Before any of these fields belonged to the Evans or Harwood families, a Ute man named Old Bishop lived here. A settler accused him of stealing a shirt and shot him dead. The killers cut up his body and sank it in the Provo River. They wanted to make sure nobody found it. We know little about his death. But it is the oldest event tied to this exact ground. It is older than any farm. It is older than any bond election. It is older than any football title.

Militia attacked a sleeping Timpanogos camp nearby

A few miles northeast, in Battle Creek Canyon, thirty-five militiamen under orders from Brigham Young moved on a Timpanogos camp before sunrise. The people there were asleep. The militia surrounded them and opened fire with guns and thrown stones. Accounts differ on the toll, somewhere between four and seventeen killed. It happened the same year Old Bishop died. It happened in the same valley. Mormon settlers were pushing to claim land the Timpanogos already lived on.

A pioneer cemetery held a century of burials

The valley's early dead went into Lehi Pioneer Cemetery, opened in 1851. For a century it held the town's burials. Then, in 1951, it stopped taking new graves. The town had grown enough to need something else. The old ground was left as it was. Newer generations found their way to newer places.

A businessman built Lehi's economy before dying in 1922

Thomas Robinson Cutler was an English-American businessman. He was born in 1844. He built much of Lehi's early economy. He is buried in Lehi City Cemetery. That is about two miles from where the falcon named Flash now flies as a school mascot. He died in 1922. He died before anyone here could have imagined a bond election. He died before anyone could imagine a driver's education range. He died before anyone could imagine a pommel horse champion. His generation planted the orchards and ran the shops. They turned a scattering of farm families into a town. A century later, the town was worth building a high school on.