This past June I had a chance to visit Bald Knob Cross for the first time at a Calvary Campus Church Chi Alpha event. The cross is located on a hill in the Shawnee National Forest west of Alto Pass, IL. The idea for the cross came in 1937 when Wayman Presley was chatting with Reverend W.H. Lirely. The two talked about the need for a place for people of different denominations to worship. This led to the first Easter Sunrise service in 1937 on Bald Knob. An enthusiastic crowd of 250 attended. In the following years attendance grew to thousands .
The Cross was completed in 1963. It contained 900 heavy gauge steel panels with a white porcelain veneer that was illuminated from within by 40,000 watts of lighting. The Cross could be seen for 7,500 square miles. The structure is 111 feet tall. The base of the Cross is made of Illinois marble. The Cross can withstand winds of up to 150 miles per hour. The inside is hollow. Visitors were originally able to take stairs to the top. This has been discontinued since 1982.
When I visited the Cross, the porcelain veneer had been removed as part of a restoration process. The website, baldknobcross.com, has a nice rendering of the finished restoration which is projected for fall 2010. Even without the exterior veneer, the Cross is worth the trip to see. If you like seeing the structure behind a form, this would be particularly interesting to you. You can see the steel angles, beams, columns and cross bracing. You can also see the stairs that the public used to take to the top. The view from Bald Knob is spectacular! You can see miles of beautiful Southern Illinois forest. Bald Knob is a neat place to watch the sunset. As the day turned to night, the lights of the Cross were turned on making for a picturesque scene.
To learn more, there is a visitor’s center on the site. There is also a pavilion that makes a good place for a picnic or church gathering. Hopefully soon the Cross will be restored. Not many places are blessed to have a cross over 100 feet tall!
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