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It took years of driving past crosses scattered along roadsides near his home in central Texas before Bob Bednar began asking why the shrines were there.
In the past three years, the Southwestern University communications professor has crisscrossed four states to document the makeshift memorials and seek information about their origins.
Bednar is not surprised by the legal battle brewing in Utah between American Atheists Inc. and the state over 13 steel crosses the Utah Highway Patrol Association has erected along roads to honor fallen troopers.
According to the atheists, placing the crosses in a public right of way - land owned and maintained by the state - violates the First Amendment and state law.
Bednar, who is not a party in the atheists' federal lawsuit filed in December against the UHP, tends to agree.
"In my mind, it's a clear use of a religious symbol by a public agency in a public right of way."
Those who erect the crosses along public highways say the practice is not religiously motivated but is meant as a memorial - expression protected by the First Amendment.
It is a conflict that, despite significant public outcry supporting the crosses, probably will drag on for years in Utah courts. And it could spread to other states.
Battle of symbols: Throughout history, the cross has been used to mark the place of a sudden, violent death. Rooted in Catholicism, it is a "traditional expression of piety" tied to marking the place where the body and soul were separated before the soul could be consecrated, Bednar says.
Latinos of the Southwest, especially in New Mexico, call the crosses "descansos," or places of rest. Crosses were erected at the spots where funeral processions had paused on the route between the church and the cemetery.
Crosses also have been widely used as memorials in military cemeteries around the world, particularly since World War II.
The rapid expansion of America's interstate system and the subsequent rise in automobile fatalities fueled the use of the cross, Bednar says.
Bednar has documented roadside memorial crosses in Texas, New Mexico, Washington and Oregon. He has also seen them in New England, Florida, California and Washington, D.C.
Montana's American Legion has erected an estimated 2,000 white crosses along the state's roads since 1953 to mark highway fatalties.
The proliferation of crosses in America has led many people to believe the cross is a secular symbol, says Bednar. "Because of the media culture that we live in, you see it anytime anybody dies. The only way to fight it is to return its proper symbolism back to its Christian roots."
Jeremy Gunn, freedom of religion director for the American Civil Liberties Union, agrees the cross has a variety of applications in today's society.
"But then this becomes a battle of symbols, and it's probably better for public harmony when the state says, 'We are going to stay of the battle of symbols.' ''
'Abuse of public property': When members of the Utah Highway Patrol Association began the cross project in 1998, they looked for a symbol that would memorialize the fallen officers and send a message to passers-by that caution is always in season.
Claiming the cross is an internationally accepted symbol of memorial, they proceeded building the first three crosses on private property. In subsequent years, 11 more crosses were constructed - some of them in rest stops and others on the side of the highways.
Positioning the crosses on private property is acceptable to American Atheists President Ellen Johnson. But placing them on state land constitutes "one of the more blatant violations of the establishment of religion that we've seen in a while - a complete mixing of religion and government."
The crosses also violate state law, according to the atheists' lawsuit. A Utah Department of Transportation policy allows three types of roadside memorials: naming a stretch of road under the Adopt-a-Highway program; planting wildflowers along a highway; and erecting a memorial safety sign with a message such as "Drowsy Driving Kills" along with the crash victim's name.
The UDOT policy bans placing religious symbols on state rights of way and says all private memorials will be removed. In Montana, the cross marker project's bylaws state that crosses may not, under federal law, be placed in an interstate right of way. The crosses may, however, be erected on private property and in the right of way of other public roads. The crosses appear on state land under approval by the Montana Highway Commission. The program is intended to increase highway safety, not act as a means of memorial.
A state court ruling in Colorado in 2001, however, likened the crosses in that state to litter and found there was no legal authority for the memorials to be placed in the public right of way. Once a cross is erected, it becomes abandoned property of the state, reads the ruling. To claim the spot where a loved one died and build a monument in that spot is to "essentially allow people to adversely possess land against the people of the state of Colorado," reads the ruling.
With no legislative support, and several existing statutes in place that prohibit litter or abandoned objects, the crosses were ordered by the court to be removed.
"This is all across the country," Johnson says. "It's an abuse of public property."
'Morally disgraceful': The Alliance Defense Fund, a national group of attorneys who joined in to represent the Utah Highway Patrol Association in late December, says it is "morally disgraceful for a small group of activists to try to stop the families of state troopers who were killed in the line of duty from honoring their lost loved ones," says ADF Senior Legal Counsel Byron Babione. "To say that crosses cannot be used to memorialize a public servant is constitutionally inaccurate."
The memorials signify the service and death of a person and are not intended as a religious statement, Babione says.
Bothered by the controversy, Utah legislators have weighed in.
Recently, the legislature approved a resolution supporting the crosses, saying they are memorials, not religious symbols. The House of Representatives passed a bill to the Senate on Feb. 16 that would allow state or local government land to be sold or donated for memorials of public servants who die in the line of duty.
The bill would also allow public funds to be used for erecting or maintaining the memorial.
To argue the cross has a non-religious meaning does not pull any weight with Johnson.
"Everybody knows what it is and that's why they fight so hard to keep it," Johnson says.