Replica of Mojave Preserve cross installed, will be removed

Staff and wire reports

Thursday, May 20, 2010 | 2:30 p.m.

A replica of the cross that was removed last week from the Mojave National Preserve was installed overnight, but will be removed because of a court injunction.

The original cross, erected on a remote Mojave Desert outcropping to honor American war dead, was stolen last week less than two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed it to remain standing while a legal battle continued over its presence on federal land.

The National Park Service announced that Park Service employees spotted the replica at 7 a.m. today. It was mounted in the same location as the removed cross. Nobody claimed responsibility for it.

But the Park Service said employees will remove the replica today because of a court injunction now in place against displaying the cross at Sunrise Rock.

The 7-foot-high metal cross vanished from its perch in the Mojave National Preserve late on May 9 or early May 10, said National Park Service spokeswoman Linda Slater. Bolts holding it to the rock were cut.

The U.S. Justice Department is looking into the case. The cross has been the center of a legal dispute for about a decade since a complaint by a former park service employee represented by the ACLU.

On a 5-4 vote in April, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to order its removal. The high court told a federal judge to take a new look at a congressional plan to transfer land under the cross to private ownership.

The isolated site in the 1.6 million-acre preserve is a small rise amid Joshua trees along a road far off busy Interstate 15, about 70 miles south of Las Vegas.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars first placed a wooden cross on Sunrise Rock in 1934 to honor soldiers killed in World War I.