#roadside cross

[scribblechicken]

busy city

#furry #weirdfur #mall #traditional art #pencil crayon #ink #highway #roadside cross

[sixminutestoriesblog]

descansos

photo link

Growing up in the southern US it never occurred to me that some of the things I was used to seeing on a daily basis would be considered odd by anyone else. Yes, there were always cows in fields near the roads, Piggly Wiggly made sure you always saw large signs with a smiling pig on it as you traveled between towns, South of the Border wasn't really a theme park - but it kind of was - and you weren't going to escape its billboards until you were north of the Mason-Dixon line

and there were going to be small white crosses decorated with plastic flowers along the road as you drove.

I took those little white crosses so for granted that it wasn't until someone from another country commented on how strange they were that I even, with the front of my brain, remembered them. They certainly weren't everywhere - but they were common enough on the sides of the road that you couldn't drive too far without seeing one and they became almost ubiquitous, as much a part of the natural landscape as the cows in the fields. I don't even remember ever having to ask why they were there, though I must have. They simply were and me and all my friends knew exactly why they were there and what they meant.

The crosses, sometimes by themselves and sometimes in clusters, marked the spot where people had died in traffic accidents.

Now, humanity likes its memorials. We built a lot of them and if the people in charge won't build one, oftentimes, people will create them for themselves, showing up to specific spots to leave flowers, stuffed animals or candles. They're a way for us to mark somewhere as different from the rest of the world, a place for grief and remembrance, somewhere we can gather and acknowledge a wound left behind by a passing. These aren't graves, very often the body or bodies are laid to rest somewhere else entirely. Instead these are communal mourning places, either somewhere special to the ones lost or else where violence overtook them, usually unexpected and sharply quick. Memorials aren't often for expected deaths. Memorials are for the sudden ones, the unpredictable ones, the ones that leap out of the dark and took their prey before we knew what was happening.

'Something terrible happened here, pay attention'.

Roadside memorials aren't unique to the US either. Traffic accidents happen the world over and its human nature to want to mark the spot a loved one's last moments were, where the tragic accident came upon them unaware. There are ghost bikes left behind, a bicycle painted entirely white and chained to the spot where a cyclist was killed by a car. There are ghost shoes, nailed to poles at eye height, painted entirely white to mark where a pedestrian was hit. Some countries leave wreaths, bouquets, stone markers or signs. Some, no doubt, leave crosses. But why are small, wooden, usually white, crosses so uniform across the southern US?

Part of it is, of course, that the 'Bible Belt' stretches the same route and so markers of Southern brand Christianity are commonplace.

That's not where it started.

These small white crosses started in New Mexico and spread outward from there. New Mexico, in turn, inherited them from Mexico. In New Mexico these roadside crosses are called descansos, a 'resting place'. Long before cars, when a body needed to be carried to its final resting place, the funeral procession would either carry the coffin on their shoulders, or in cases where the graveyard was further away, in a animal drawn cart. Each place the coffin was set down so that its bearers could rest, or stop for the night, was marked with a white wooden cross, hammered into the ground where the dead, and their escort, had rested before moving onward. These white crosses marked the road from where the person had died to the graveyard where they were settled into their final resting place. In fact, over time, the white crosses came to represent the path from town to the graveyard, serving as a kind of sign post to anyone that needed them. Sometimes, on trails far from home, the white cross next to the roadside would actually serve to make the grave of someone that had died so far from anywhere that there was no where to bury them but for the most part, descansos were resting places on the way to the final resting spot.

With the arrival of cars and faster transportation, the stark little descansos weren't needed to serve as markers of sorrow that had traveled, and found rest, along the way toward its final destination anymore. Instead, they began to serve another purpose. The little white crosses stayed a place for grief to rest from its burden for a while but now it was in the form of leaving offerings or memories, a place where the people left behind, mourning their loved ones, could remind anyone traveling that route that someone precious had died and was still mourned. Descantos always faced the road, not away from it. The whole point of a descantos is to be seen by strangers.

In the 1940s through the 1950s the Arizona Highway Patrol began marking places along the highway where automobile fatalities had occurred with small white crosses. Even after they stopped, the families of the dead picked up the habit and carried it forward. While the laws regulating roadside memorials vary from state to state in the US, in New Mexico, descansos are still considered sacred and on the rare occasions road workers are forced to move them when repairing or expanding the roads, they are careful to restore them to as close to the spot they were taken from as possible. These days the forms the memorials take vary widely, but whether they stay a humble cross or not, they still serve to both let mourners mark the spot where they lost their loved one -

and to also serve as a warning and a reminder to all passing motorists.

'Traveling the highways of America is dangerous. Keep alert. Be aware. Don't become the next white cross sprouting along the side of this long, deadly stretch of American highway."

#descansos #roadside memorial #roadside cross #travel #new mexico #mexico #american highway #ngl I feel weird posting pictures #white crosses #shrine #roadside shrine

[crossmanufacturing]

Customer Review Roadside Cross

Customer Review-thank you Laura for your kind testimonial! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐Thank you so much for the beautiful cross I got to place in the site my son pass away at. You did an amazing job. The process was easy and quick I was able to place it on his birthday. You would not go wrong with there service. Communication was easy. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

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#personalized roadside cross #roadside cross #roadside marker #roadside memorial #roadside memorial cross #roadway cross

[floralmemorials]

Roadside Memorials

This article is not a long read, or listen (both in the download above). No matter your opinion on roadside memorials, I had never taken a side, the words are meaningfully from a different point of view. Community Viewpoint: Honor the roadside memorials As I write this, with about one week left in February, some trees, bushes and daffodils have already begun to bloom around Danville. — Read on…

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#American symbols #angel garden #cemetery flowers #cemeteryroadside #cross #family memorials #floralmemorials #Floralmemorials blog #grief #humans #loss #lost pauper cemetery #memorial #memorial cross #memorial crosses #memorial day #memorial marker #memorials #remembrance #roadside cross #roadside memorial #roadside memorials #Thoughts & More

[americanhell]

#rural aesthetic #voidcore #oddcore #fever dream #feverdreamcore #nostalgic #rural america #american gothic #mine #my photography #crosses #roadside #memorial #lostcore #liminal spaces #southern gothic #ruralcore #abyss #dreamcore #rural gothic #eerie #eeriecore #nostalgiacore #roadside memorial #regional gothic #art #darkcore #dark art #bleak #backroads

[mother-lee]

#snowy day #small town aesthetic #deer #roadside #crossing the street #landscape #rural aesthetic #americana #snow #winter #small town #snowy road #snowy landscape #rural areas #power lines #january #february

[kojiarakiartworks]

November 2023 JAPAN HOKKAIDO SAPPORO

© KOJI ARAKI Art Works

Daily life and every small thing is the gate to the universe ：）

#November #2023 #November 2023 #JAPAN #HOKKAIDO #SAPPORO #downtown #sky #cloud #sun light #sun #telephone pole #electrical wire #roadside tree #tree #shadow #intersection #pedestrian crossing #photographers on tumblr #b&w photography #black and white photography #monochrome photograph #original photography #photography #koji araki art works #PENTAX K1 #SIGMA 15mm 2.8 EX Fisheye #Fisheye #SIGMA #PENTAX

[veiligplekje]

Camerig, the Netherlands

#camerig #vijlen #limburg #the netherlands #wegkruis #catholicism #roadside crosses #farmcore #country life

[gratiasagere]

visiting mom

#jesus #mary #mother mary #holy mother #rosary #cross #roadside chapel #green #may #forest #woods #tree #photographers on tumblr #photo #photography #2023 #my own #spring #catholic

[henry-harrison-mayes]

Get Right, Patrick Owens

Steele, AL 2017

#henry harrision mayes #cross #roadside evangelist

[life-of-architecture]

Złockie foto z 26 lipca 2017

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Złockie, Poland taken on 26 July 2017

#wayside shrines #roadside crosses #Eastern Europe #folk art #wooden sculpture #photographers on tumblr #original photography #Central Europe #Poland #Polska #Złockie #Zlockie #places of worship #cultural landscape #countryside #christianity #folklore #traditions #wanderlust #off the beaten path

[avalondesigns]

Peanut’s roadside ufo museum (and gas station) 🐿🛸

#animal crossing new horizons #acnh #animal crossing peanut #she asked for an american museum and what could be more american than this? #one of those shady little roadside attractions off route 66 that should’ve closed down years ago and yet is holding on stubbornly #I admire you little roadside museums. i hope you live forever and never die #I hope the earth worries itself to pieces and the land cracks and the sky falls and the sea turns to blood and the roadside museum lives on #also I’d just watched gargoyles (1972) on svengoolie so I had this kind of place on the brain #call this place the peanut gallery HEYO okay now I’m done

[crossmanufacturing]

Large Personalized Memorial 588

Purple personalized gold

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#cemetery cross #cemetery decoration #cemetery headstone #cemetery marker #funeral cross #funeral flowers #funeral gift #funeral memorial #grave decoration #grave marker #gravesite cross #large personalized memorial #roadside cross

[floralmemorials]

Is better always better?

Is better always better?

I started my small online business in September of 2014. I was worried, frustrated, and somewhat confused about selling my handmade crosses online. I survived the first year and have enjoyed ever year since. The best part for me is the creative part of business. Unfortunately the other “stuff” (ie; finances, social media, marketing, shopping, ok maybe not shopping since it’s fun too) all come…

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#cemetery #cross #crosses #Etsy #Etsy.com #floralmemorials #Floralmemorials blog #grave #gravesite #handcrafted #loved ones #memorial cross #memorial crosses #memorial marker #memorials #roadside cross #roadside memorial #selling online #Thoughts &amp; More

[muttball]

The Groom Cross

Groom, Texas is the site of the the largest free standing cross in the western hemisphere, located along interstate 40 in Groom, Texas. The cross was erected in 1995, and is 19 stories, or 190 feet tall. The giant cross can be seen from as far as 25 miles away and seen by millions of motorists every year.

#crossess #cross #groom cross #big things #tallest things #texas panhandle attractions #roadside attractions #travel america #visit texas #travel photography #travel #muttball

[dabidagoose]

Pissing transgenderly in a stall with conservative/transphobic graffiti :D👍

#Ready to leave Colorado! #this is actually the first I've seen in a bathroom but uh. roadside signs 😵‍💫 #anyways very glad this was the kinda bathroom where each stall is like it's own tiny room or else i would've felt significantly more unsafe #just gonna ignore the bad and think about how funny it is to look at graffiti saying 'fuck biden' while pissing in the men's room with my #zero dicks #it said more too but uh . kinda wrote some disgusting things! so i will not be posting it. #it looks like some ppl have tried to cross out/make some edits but uh. the bs is still very visible!