MEEKER | Observant Meeker residents noticed the absence of the lights on the cross at the top of Lobo Mountain earlier this week and started asking questions.
White River Electric Association (WREA) pays for the maintenance and cost of keeping the cross lit year-round. WREA’s Kari Matrisciano said via email on Tuesday that the cross, which is mounted on a 100-foot high communications tower, is in need of repair and electrical maintenance is currently underway.
The lighted cross has been around since at least 1960. That’s the first year retired WREA employee Leon Stout remembers helping with the maintenance.
Stout told the HT in a 2017 interview that when WREA acquired the microwave radio towers on Lobo they took several hundred feet of light strings to the tower with the intention to create a lighted star, but didn’t have enough lights and made a cross instead.
Early on, the cross was only lit during December and Easter weekend. In the early 2000s, members of a now-defunct local ministerial alliance surveyed the community about the cross and the decision was made to keep it lit year-round.
“We hope to have it lit and shining brightly in the next couple of days,” Matrisciano said. “It’s wonderful to know that it’s become an important part of our community and that members were keen enough to notice that it was out.”
As of Thursday evening, June 22, the cross is lit once again.
BY NIKI TURNER | [email protected]
