The wooden crosses, shown Dec. 2, 2017, honoring the 58 victims of the mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip, are displayed at the Clark County Museum.
Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2017 | 2 a.m.
Related Coverage
Less than a week remains to visit the crosses memorializing the 58 victims of the Las Vegas mass shooting on Oct. 1.
The crosses were moved to the Clark County Museum’s outdoor stage on Nov. 12 after being placed at the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign days after the shooting. On Sunday, the crosses will be moved indoors and catalogued with mementos left at the initial memorial site for preservation.
“We want to make sure this stuff survives so that as people in the future want to study it and want to learn about us and (how) the whole world mourned with us, they'll be able to do that,” said Mark Hall-Patton, Clark County Museums administrator.
If the crosses are left outside for much longer, they will begin to break down, Hall-Patton said.
The wooden crosses honoring the 58 victims of the mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip are displayed at the Clark County Museum.
The museum, located in Henderson, is not allowing any additional items to be left at the crosses. Instead, visitors can write comments in a notebook that will be catalogued along with the rest of the items.
Hall-Patton, a frequent contributor on the History Channel’s “Pawn Stars,” recommends people who want to leave items to visit the Community Healing Garden in downtown Las Vegas. “Those looking for a memorial should go there and interact with that,” he said. “It’s a wonderful place.”
Eventually, the crosses and other items left at the "Welcome" sign and other memorial sites throughout the city will be featured in an exhibit. Hall-Patton didn’t have an estimated date when that might happen.
“There is no timeline; it can easily take a year or two to process everything,” he said. “We haven't gotten to that point. When we know, we’re going to put them out, we will let everybody know, as we do with any exhibit. We’ve had these for a couple of weeks. We’re still trying to sort things and make sure they're housed as good as they can and do everything else we already do (at the museum).”
To help with a job of this magnitude, Hall-Patton said that volunteers are welcomed.
“They have to be background-checked, it’s a county thing … but we’ll be using volunteers,” Hall-Patton said. The process includes recording, cleaning and then housing the items.
Hall-Patton said that he will consider the project’s needs in the museum’s budget request, which he is creating now. He said that he doesn’t foresee any special accommodations associated with caring for and storing shooting memorial-related items.
He said the items — which range from small cross necklaces to signs and murals — will eventually be available to be viewed online.
An Illinois carpenter built and transported the crosses in his truck to Las Vegas and placed them at the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” site on Oct. 5, four days after a gunman opened fire on a crowd of 22,000 people at the Route 91 Harvest Festival from the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay, killing 58 and injuring more than 500.
To view the crosses before they are stored away for the foreseeable future, the Clark County Museum, 1830 S. Boulder Highway in Henderson, is open from 9 a.m. until 4:40 p.m. seven days a week. There is a $2 admission fee charge for adults ($1 for those 3-18 and seniors).
