Mojave Memorial Cross, War memorial in Mojave National Preserve, California, US
The Mojave Memorial Cross, officially the White Cross World War I Memorial, is a cross on Sunrise Rock, a granite outcropping beside Cima Road about 6 miles north of Cima, California. The rock sits in a saddle between Cima Dome and the Ivanpah Mountains, within the Mojave National Preserve. The Teutonia Peak trailhead lies across the road, roughly 1,300 feet north of the monument.
The original cross was erected in 1934 on Sunrise Rock, introduced to its caretakers by prospector John Riley Bembry, a World War I medic and one of the veterans who established it. Volunteers maintained and rebuilt it after destruction. In 2010 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in Salazar v. Buono that transferring the surrounding land to a veterans group did not violate the separation of church and state. A land exchange removing Sunrise Rock from the Mojave National Preserve was approved in April 2012, and the cross was rededicated on Veterans Day, November 11, 2012.
The cross was erected in 1934 by World War I veterans, among them prospector John Riley Bembry, who had served as a medic. In the decades after, historians and veterans' groups linked it to the tradition of battlefield and roadside crosses American servicemen used in Europe to mark graves and memorial sites, religious in origin but employed in the interwar period for fallen soldiers of any faith.
The cross stood on Sunrise Rock, a granite outcropping beside Cima Road about 12 miles (19 km) south of Interstate 15 and 6 miles (9.7 km) north of Cima. The trailhead for Teutonia Peak is on the opposite side of the road, 1,300 feet (400 m) north of the site. The original cross is now at the Goffs Schoolhouse Museum.
The original cross was stolen in 2010 and found over 500 kilometers away before reaching the Goffs Schoolhouse Museum. This event reveals how deeply the monument was rooted in people's minds.
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