By Rene Sanchez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 9, 2002
MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE, Calif. -- On a remote ridge known as Sunrise Rock, a five-foot cross erected long ago as a makeshift war memorial has survived harsh desert climates and recurring attacks by vandals. But soon it may be toppled for good by a more powerful force: the Constitution.
The cross had stood here in obscurity for nearly 70 years, looked after only by a small, devoted band of desert residents who treasure its presence on the barren landscape. Now, it has become the focus of new debate over the separation of church and state.
The American Civil Liberties Union wants the cross taken down, saying such a religious symbol has no place on public land. But some Republicans in Congress, backed by the Bush administration, are taking legislative steps to keep it propped up in the desert.
Earlier this year, the feud over the cross appeared to be over. A federal judge sided with the ACLU and ordered it removed from the Mojave Preserve.
The National Park Service, however, has not done so. Instead, it is urging the Justice Department to appeal the court ruling.
Meanwhile, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), whose district includes the sparsely populated communities of the Mojave, is trying to make the court decision moot with an unusual land swap.
To keep the cross standing, Lewis is proposing legislation to transfer an acre of the public land that surrounds the site to private interests. In exchange, a local landowner would donate five privately owned acres within the boundaries of the vast desert preserve to the federal government. The deal may be taken up early by the next Congress.
"Preserving the cross is only about preserving a part of history in the desert," said Jim Specht, a spokesman for Lewis. "Residents out there have a very strong attachment to it as a war memorial, not as a religious symbol. People come from all over the desert to use it as a gathering point."
Twice in recent years, Lewis has succeeded in protecting the Mojave cross. He won support for a little-noticed bill that prohibited the Park Service from taking it down. Then he persuaded Congress to declare the isolated site, which is near where Interstate 15 crosses the Nevada border, a national memorial. But the ACLU countered those moves with a lawsuit and won.
ACLU officials, who were tipped off to the cross by a retired Park Service official, say they are confident every attempt to save the Mojave cross will be defeated in court.
Peter Eliasberg, managing attorney for ACLU's chapter in Southern California, said a group of desert residents uses the Mojave cross every year as a setting for Easter worship services, in clear violation of federal law. And he scoffed at the notion that the cross is primarily a war memorial.
"It's just fundamentally unbelievable to take the preeminent symbol of one of the major religions in this country and the world," Eliasberg said, "and then pretend that it's not that at all."
Some land groups around the West also say they are worried the proposed land swap in the Mojave could set a bad precedent for the national parks system.
Longtime residents here say a World War I veteran who was a local miner erected the cross in 1934. Back then, it was two pieces of wood nailed together and stuck into the desert sands.
It has nearly been destroyed many times, either by nature or desert pranksters. For the past 20 years, its caretakers have been Henry and Wanda Sandoz, an elderly couple who live in the Mojave. They raise the cross whenever it falls and repair it when it gets damaged. Its latest incarnation is two metal pipes that have been welded together and bolted to a concrete base.
Wanda Sandoz, a retired school bus driver, said her husband cares for the cross -- and is determined to keep it standing -- because the man who first raised it in the desert asked him to make it a lasting memorial to veterans shortly before he died.
"My husband made a promise to one of his best friends," she said. "We'll do anything we can to keep the cross up. I can't imagine anyone taking offense to this. Maybe I could understand this debate if someone had tried to put it up recently. But it's been there for so long, and no one ever complained."
Sandoz said the cross serves a religious purpose only once a year, on Easter. "We all know what it's mostly there to honor," she said. "It's not about religion."
Religious symbols exist on other public grounds that the Park Service supervises -- from Civil War battlefields to Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached. But those sites have been formally deemed to have significant historical value. The Park Service has concluded that neither the Mojave cross nor the land around it deserves that distinction.
"Nothing historical ever happened there," Eliasberg said. "And it's not even the original cross."
He and other opponents of the cross said they would not object to having a war memorial on the Mojave site as long as it did not promote a particular religion.
If Congress approves Lewis's latest plan, a local Veterans of Foreign Wars post will become the steward of the cross. If the ACLU prevails, Sandoz vowed to continue having solemn gatherings there.
"We would keep doing it even if one of us had to carry a cross up there every time," she said. "We can't imagine what it would be like not see it there after all this time.''