[17] In the official account of Joseph Smith it is stated that Manchester, Ontario County, New York, is the location of the encounter with Angel Moroni.

[18] The hill named Cumorah in Manchester, New York is where Smith said he discovered the golden plates which contained the writings of the Book of Mormon.

[20] The hill, which was unnamed prior to 1829, is situated a few miles from Smith's boyhood home on a farm that was then owned by a local farmer, Alonzo Sanders.

According to geologists, the hill was formed during the retreat of the Ice Age glaciers, and it rises approximately 110 feet (34 m) above the surrounding valley floor.

They did note a significantly sized hole on the east side of the hill that had been dug years previously by treasure seekers.

Mormon wrote, "And when three hundred and eighty and four years had passed away [since the sign of the birth of Christ], we had gathered in all the remainder of our people unto the land of Cumorah.

Moroni records, "after the great and tremendous battle at Cumorah, behold, the Nephites who had escaped into the country southward were hunted by the Lamanites, until they were all destroyed.

[37] According to the account of Brigham Young, the angel instructed Joseph Smith to carry the golden plates back to the hill Cumorah.

John L. Sorenson has listed 15 cultural criteria for the hill Cumorah which are based on contextual clues from the text of the Book of Mormon: cities, towers, agriculture, metallurgy, formal political states, organized religion, idolatry, crafts, trade, writing, weaponry, astronomy, calendar systems, cement, and wheels.

Sorensen alleges that the hill in New York at least partly fits four of these requirements while the Cerro El Vigia meets all of them.

These criteria are as follows:[41] Grant H. Palmer suggested that Smith borrowed the name "Cumorah" through his study of the treasure-hunting stories of Captain William Kidd.

[43] Previous to announcing his discovery of the Book of Mormon, Smith had spent several years employed as a treasure seeker in Chenango County, New York.

Kidd had buried this treasure after returning from an Indian Ocean voyage where he lost a third of his crew to cholera on the Comoros islands.

Palmer suggested that Smith borrowed the name of a settlement in the Comoros—Moroni—and applied it to the angel who showed him where to find the golden plates buried in the Hill Cumorah.

[47] A minority of LDS scholars, some of whom specialize in 19th-century American literature, place the original literary setting for the Book of Mormon among the mythic mound builders of North America.

[48] Charles W. Dunn depicts Coriantumr's last battle in his book The Master's Other Sheep: An Epic of America and Other Poems.

He explores the hill's role in the Book of Mormon's destruction of purported ancient American peoples, namely the Nephites and the Jaredites, and how that is portrayed in literature.

[50] This large, outdoor Latter-day Saint pageant typically occurred in early July and was free to the public.

83–84; Improvement Era, June 1953, p. 423).Both the Nephite and the Jaredite civilizations fought their final great wars of extinction at and near the Hill Cumorah (or Ramah as the Jaredites termed it), which hill is located between Palmyra and Manchester in the western part of the state of New York ... Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and many early brethren, who were familiar with the circumstances attending the coming forth of the Book of Mormon in this dispensation, have left us pointed testimony as to the identity and location of Cumorah or Ramah.