This is a couple years old but it's a good background story:
THAT OLD RUGGED CROSS
ACLU opposition, vandals threaten veterans war memorial in Mojave Desert
Las Vegas Review-Journal 12/15/02
MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE, Calif. - On a cool afternoon last week, Henry Sandoz, a retired miner with a thick white mustache and scuffed up cowboy boots, climbed a rock as big as a two-story house in this desert landscape.
"They tried cutting it down," the 63-year-old said from atop what locals have dubbed Sunrise Rock, about 10 miles off Interstate 15 just south of the Nevada border.
He pointed to rusty scuff marks on a 6-foot-tall steel cross that had been set in concrete and bolted atop the rock. "Two places where they used hacksaws," he noted.
"Really," said his wife, Wanda, 59, standing below, eating cheese and crackers.
"Yup," said Henry, flashing a wry smile. "Here, it looks like they even wrapped a chain around it.
He shook his head and laughed. "Well, they sure tried hard."
Foes of the cross -- first vandals and then the American Civil Liberties Union -- have for years been trying hard to remove the two welded pieces of steel from Sunrise Rock.
The ACLU sued the federal government, contending that because the cross sits on federal land, it violates the constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state. A judge agreed and ordered the cross removed.
But the fight isn't over yet. The area's congressman became involved, and a land trade could save the 6-foot-tall symbol.
Long before the courts or the politicians got involved, the cross's protector was a grizzled old prospector and World War I veteran named J. Riley Bembry.
"We really loved him," said Wanda, a retired school bus driver.
"Yeah," said her husband. "He was like a second father to me."
In 1934, Bembry and a group of other war veterans fashioned a cross out of steel pipe and set it high above the desert floor. According to a plaque they placed nearby, they intended it to be a memorial to all war veterans.
Over the years, the vets would gather at the rock on Easter Sunday for sunrise services. The cross became more than a war memorial; it became a religious gathering place.
From time to time, vandals or the elements would knock the cross down. Eventually, the plaque disappeared. But every time the cross went down, Bembry or another vet would put it back up. Sometimes he'd make a new one from pipe, other times he simply nailed two boards together.
The prospector lived not far away, in a shack he'd built out of wooden planks and corrugated aluminum back in the 1920s. To this day, the shack sits alone in the desert near one of his mining claims.
Along the way, Bembry, who was born in 1899, befriended the Sandozes, who met him while picnicking. The Sandozes have lived in the area for more than 40 years.
As Bembry got older, caring for the cross became more difficult. Eventually, when he was in his 70s, it became more than he could handle.
The cross again was gone when he confided in his friend.
"I sure would like to see somebody put that cross back up there and maintain it," Henry Sandoz recalls Bembry saying to him.
Sandoz knew a hint when he heard one. He thought long and hard about his friend's plea, and he said yes, he'd do it. He would look after the cross.
Sandoz had never served in the military. So taking care of the cross, he said, was "partly my contribution to my country. And to my friend, Riley Bembry. I knew he couldn't do it any more."
Bembry died in 1984, and his friends buried him in a tiny cemetery far off the beaten path out in the Mojave. His grave, one of just five in the cemetery, sits next to a prospector's who died in 1909.
For better than two decades now, both before and after Bembry's death, the Sandozes have been the caretakers of the cross.
Just like Bembry, Sandoz often found himself replacing the cross. A few years back, he finally welded two 4-inch steel pipes together, bolted the cross to the top of Sunrise Rock and filled the hollow pipes with concrete.
It seemed to hold well, he said. Indeed, the cross is so solidly attached to the rock today that someone without serious power tools would probably have a hard time removing it.
The Sandozes and a few dozen mountain residents continued to hold Easter services at the cross, they said.
In 1994, 60 years after the cross was erected, the federal government declared the surrounding 1.6 million acre area covered with Joshua trees, old mining trails and dry lakes a national preserve. The National Park Service took over managing the land from the Bureau of Land Management.
At the time the preserve was formed, the Park Service employed a man named Frank Buono, an environmentalist who went on to become the area's assistant superintendent for ecosystem management.
After Buono retired in 1997, he complained about the cross, according to court documents. Its presence there offended him, he said, because it appeared to be a government endorsement of Christianity.
The Southern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union got word of the controversy and immediately argued the cross violated the constitutional principle of separation of church and state.
In October 1999, the ACLU threatened to sue the Park Service if the cross was not removed. Park officials undertook a study and decided that the cross did not have enough historical significance to qualify for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, and so it should come down.
Area residents, however, put up a fight.
"We didn't just tell them no. We said, `Hell no,' " Sandoz explained. "I put it up there to stay and I'm not taking it down."
In the meantime, Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, heard about the cross and the ACLU's objection.
In 2001, Lewis slipped an amendment into a bill that made it illegal for the Park Service to remove the cross. The cross would stay, it seemed.
And so the ACLU sued.
In July of this year, a federal judge in Riverside, Calif., ruled that the presence of the religious symbol on the land was unconstitutional. He ordered the Park Service to remove it, though the judge did not specify when, exactly, that should be done.
The Sandozes were devastated, but there was still hope for the cross. Lewis was not done maneuvering.
He plans on introducing language into a bill in the upcoming session of Congress that would transfer the land that the cross sits on into private hands, a local Veterans of Foreign Wars post, in exchange for land that the Sandozes own.
The land transfer idea has the Sandozes excited. But they said even if it fails, the courts will not stop them or their neighbors from using the area as they wish.
"If the cross did have to come down -- and in my heart I don't believe that it will -- we would still have Easter sunrise services out there," said Wanda Sandoz. "We would carry a cross out there with us if we had to."