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PROVO — A Utah woman is spearheading an effort to restore a religious symbol long forgotten in the foothills east of Provo over the past 40 years.
Niki Thornock, a Provo resident, is hoping the town’s Easter cross — which served as symbol that brought different sects of Christianity together in the 1940s and was torn down and left in shambles during the 1970s — will be repaired and given a new location for people now to witness a portion of the town’s history.
The plan to help restore the cross began about a year and a half ago when Thornock learned of it while sifting through old photos from a woman in the same church ward as her. The woman’s family, Thornock said, has lived in Utah since the 1870s.
“I was looking through her pictures and she had a picture of herself sitting on top a big stone cross,” Thornock said.
The next day, Thornock, who lives on the foot of Y Mountain, visited the site where the Cross once stood.
“It was just broken on the ground and (had) graffiti all over it,” she said. “Apparently it was a great hangout spot because it had beer cans and fire pits all around, and I thought, ‘This needs to be fixed.’ ”
Thornock researched further and discovered the cross was erected in 1939 by a local stonemason named Nathan Dixie Hiatt and originally served as an area for interdenominational groups to congregate as one on Easter Sunday before those services discontinued in 1951.
Though the services ended, the cross remained in place and was a popular spot in the foothills until vandals in the 1970s damaged it beyond repair, and it was bulldozed for safety reasons, Thornock said. The pieces were left around where it once stood and have remained there to this day.
"It's just been laying on the mountain pretty much for the last 40 years," she said.
The idea to restore the cross, interestingly enough, has begun to bring all denominations of Christianity in the area back together again like it did in the 1940s.
Thornock, who is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, partnered with the Provo Community Congregational United Church of Christ (PCCUCC), which started a fundraising campaign last week* to help raise the $14,000 needed to finish the project. She added she has also had communication with the Utah Valley Ministerial Organization about the project.
“Everybody I’ve talked to has said, ‘Wow, that’s a cool idea,’” Thornock said. “There’s people I know that are LDS, people I know that are not LDS and people where I haven’t had the faintest idea, but it’s been universally positive of the idea to bring it up again.”
She said everything is in place with a stonemason, bronze plaque about the cross and a crane to move it from its old location to the East Lawn Memorial cemetery, where it will stand in the future. Once the money is raised, she estimated the project should move quickly.
In addition to the the online fundraising campaign, Thornock said checks can be made out to PCCUCC for Easter Cross and mailed to Easter Cross Project, c/o Provo Community Congregational United Church of Christ, P.O. BOX 132, Provo, UT 84603.
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