Foreword: Religious Displays in a National Preserve
The Establishment Clause and the Sunrise Rock Cross
In 1934, a chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) erected a wooden cross as a memorial to war dead on Federal land in the Mojave Desert of southeastern California. Since then, the site on Sunrise Rock has been used for various religious services and military commemorations. The cross has been replaced several times. Its current version — roughly eight feet tall and made of metal pipes painted white — was installed by Henry Sandoz in 1998. Now, this bare-bones display in the middle of sparsely populated desert has become the center of legal controversies over government endorsement of…
