The Oregon Tech O
Near Klamath Falls, Oregon
That big letter on the hillside marks Oregon Tech, a school born out of the Second World War. It opened in nineteen forty-seven as the Oregon Vocational School, set up to retrain returning veterans, and held its first classes inside a deactivated Marine Corps hospital outside Klamath Falls. The present campus was dedicated in nineteen sixty-four, and around that time students hauled rocks up the slope and whitewashed them into a giant letter O, later modified to hold a T inside it.
The O became a canvas for pranks. Students would sneak up at night and rearrange the stones into other shapes. The most infamous came in the spring of nineteen seventy-six, when the O was reshaped overnight into the Playboy bunny symbol.
That was the last straw for the college president, who ordered the rocks scattered down the hillside. Eventually a truce was struck, and the students rebuilt their letter where it still sits today.
