A Grove, A Hill and A Farm

The Smith Family Farm was the boyhood home of Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement.

The farm—located in the townships of Palmyra, Wayne County and Manchester, Ontario County, New York—includes the Sacred Grove, the Smiths' restored frame home and a reconstructed log home.  

The farm site passed into ownership of 

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in 1916, and in the 1990s, the church restored the frame home, reconstructed the log home, and built a welcome center. Church missionaries provide free tours.

The foundational event of the Latter Day Saint movement took place in what is commonly referred to as The Sacred Grove. This Grove is a forested area near the border of western New Yorknear the home of Joseph Smith, Jr.. It is the location where Smith had his First Vision, an important theophany in the movement's theology occurring in the Spring of the year 1820.

The exact location of the Sacred Grove is not known, but it would have been west of Smith's adolescent home on the border of the towns of Palmyra and Manchester. This area was being cleared at the time for farming by the Smith family, who were also using the trees to harvest maple syrup. The area has been purchased by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who cares for the area and allows tourists to visit. Latter Day Saints view the place as a sacred site.

 

Cumorah ( /kəˈmɔr.ə) (also known as Mormon Hill, or Gold Bible Hill, and Inspiration Point)  is a drumlin inManchester, New York, where Joseph Smith, Jr. said he found a set of gold plates which he translated into English and published as theBook of Mormon.

In the text of the Book of Mormon, "Cumorah" is a hill located in a land of the same name, which is "a land of many waters, rivers and fountains".  In this hill Book of Mormon figure Mormon deposited a number of metal plates containing the record of his nation of Nephites, just prior to their final battle with the Lamanites in which at least 230,000 people were killed.

Early Latter Day Saints assumed that the Cumorah in New York was the same Cumorah described in the Book of Mormon, but in the early-20th century, scholars from the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS Church) and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) began to speculate that there were two such hills and that final battle in the Book of Mormon took place on a hill in southern Mexico, Central America, or South America. The LDS Church has no official position on the matter^[11] and these hypotheses are not held by some leaders and members of the LDS Church but firmly espoused by others.