A cross of snow on a mountainside, once thought a wilderness mirage, became a powerful national symbol after reports of it began circulating in the 1860s and Ferdinand V. Hayden’s 1873 survey team mapped and photographed the 1,500-foot formation. Samuel Bowles in 1869 cast it as a divine sign at the continent’s center, and poets, painters, and pilgrims embraced it as a portent whose difficult approach made the journey a trial of faith. Shrine Pass Road, dedicated in 1931, brought so many visitors that President Herbert Hoover placed the site under federal management. Photographer William Henry Jackson carried sixty pounds of camera equipment to neighboring Notch Mountain to capture the scene, and his images, like his 1873 Yellowstone photographs, helped shape public perception. They inspired Thomas Moran to paint the mountain as a union of heaven and earth above a rugged, Edenic landscape, presenting it as a source of inspiration, protection, and divine promise.
