I first heard of Cerro del Bernal in 1960 while serving as a missionary in Laredo, Texas. Jose Davila
had come up from Puebla, Mexico and gave a series of firesides on archaeology and the Book of Mormon while there. Davila was a former guide for Milton R. Hunter during his explorations of ancient ruins in Central America. He was very intelligent and had mastered the Nahuatl language.
One of his theories that impressed me was that the Cerro del Bernal, northwest of Tampico, Mexico, was the Book of Mormon Hill Cumorah.
Later, following my mission, I traveled by bus down to Mexico City. The highway passes within 10 miles of Bernal and I remember being emotionally drawn to it as we drove by. The bus didn't stop of course, and I had to wait until years later to visit the hill up close.
Cerro del Bernal is a prominent landmark in the extensive flat plains of the region. It is the stump of an extinct volcano with only the hard volcanic core now exposed. It seemed like an ideal candidate for Cumorah, but my subsequent explorations there dissuaded me from accepting it as such. Nevertheless, others, such as Jerry Ainsworth, in his book Mormon and Moroni, have seriously championed it as the famous hill.
In 2002 my wife and I were serving as missionaries in Monterrey, Mexico, several hundred miles north of the hill. During Easter Break we had a week off and we decided to drive down and see the hill close up. It was still very impressive as we got near. We stopped at the nearby village of Graciano Sanchez and inquired about a guide. We were directed to the home of Gustavo Cano who was familiar with the hill and agreed to guide us there. The next morning we picked him up and drove to the wooded area surrounding the hill. We had to hike in about three miles with Gustavo cutting a trail with his machete. My wife, Myrna, stayed at the bottom of the cliffs while Gustavo and I went up the steep hill. There were narrow chutes and rock slides cutting up the side. We choose one of these and went up. It took us about an hour to get near the top, but unfortunately we had chosen the wrong chute and it ended in a sheer cliff 200 feet from the top. But I had seen most of what I had wanted to see, and we went back down.
My conclusions were that it was not a good choice for the hill. It was much too rugged and an army of Mormon's size could not have fought there (although they could have fought in the plain at the base). There were no evidences of a battle fought in the area. It didn't seem to provide any special advantage for offense or defense, any more than hundreds of other mountains around. Later investigations didn't reveal any archaeological evidence that there had been a battle there, or a nearby large settlement. I still favor my later theory of the Cerro San Gil in Guatemala.
We returned to the car weary and worn from the adventure, but happy that it had turned out well. We took Gustavo home and talked about our interest in the hill on the way. He seemed interested, so we left him with a Book of Mormon. His wife had prepared a nice dinner and invited us to eat with them. Then we drove back to our motel.
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| Gustavo and Myrna Warr at base of hill. Notice the strange trees with a triangular base. Gustavo said they were soyate palms. |
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| View of the steep rock face during the ascent. |
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| Gustavo near the top, looking south. |
The following Facebook videos show different expeditions to Cerro de Bernal. The first 5 are a continuous series, and the last 2 are separate expeditions. These are all in Spanish.
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