That’s an excellent question! As a proud native of P-ville (or, as some have taken to calling it in recent years, P-Vegas), I know the story well. I'll share it with you, with a little too much information:

Platteville is home to Wisconsin’s first teaching college (formed in 1866), and that college, according to Wikipedia, joined with a new mining college in 1907 (you can see the M and a bell symbolizing education in the school's official symbol). And that’s what the “M” stands for – mining. Zinc was found in the area in the early 1900s, and there was a huge mining boom. The "M" is a big whitewashed letter M on the side of a hill. The school doesn’t have a mining program any more, but it is a big engineering school. One of the engineering programs takes care of and cleans the “M.” Every couple of years they re-whitewash the whole “M,” and every year they do an “M”-lighting ceremony where they light it up with candles and you can see it throughout the area. It’s pretty cool.

Hopefully this summer I can do a few more moped videos that show the actual “M” – maybe even a hike up the hill or a view from the top.

Oh, I should also point out that there’s about a million urban legends about “The Big M,” but my favorites are that it’s full of gold bars stolen during prohibition, and that a Japanese company challenged its claim to “World’s Largest” but lost that challenge when the “M” was measured.

It may not be something with which you often feel, but I’m pretty sure the nerve endings in my forehead had gone numb. A friend responded after seeing the video that he hoped I could feel my forehead again. Luckily, I can.