White crosses

Now let's see... If I were to do my monument analysis somewhere else, where would it be?
This may seem a little morbid, but I think i would look at the crosses on the sides of highways. I can remember going to Montana to go skiing in  middle school, and being shocked by the number of crosses next to the highway, to represent people that had died in car accidents. Even though most of the monuments (most were crosses) looked very similar, I think it would be interesting to do a full inventory of them on a stretch of highway somewhere.

I did a little bit of research on these crosses (mostly indirectly while looking for pictures) and found this blog: http://blog.aggregatedintelligence.com/2008/07/white-crosses-along-montana-highways.html , which led me to discover that the white crosses along the Montana highways are apart of a special program run by the American Legion of Montana. It turns out that all of the crosses are white because they were put there by the legion. The program is called the 'Fatality Marker Safety Program' and is intended as a safety program, not a memorial program. More information can be found at these websites:
http://www.mtlegion.org/programs/30-highway-fatality-marker-overview.html
http://www.mtlegion.org/programs/highway-fatality-markers.html

The stories of the victims of the accidents can be found here: http://www.montanahighwaycrosses.com/

I couldn't bring myself to read any of them. A good friend of mine passed away this past summer in a highway accident, and so I think these stories would hit a little too close to home. Maybe that's why I started thinking about highway crosses in the first place, because the last death I experiences was on a highway. It gives me a good feeling to know that there is an organization out there that is dedicated to both memorializing these victims (although that is not what the program is intended for), and helping to raise awareness about how dangerous driving at high speeds can be.