Most sources cite the Red Scare as the reason behind the Boise landmark, but don't connect it to events that happened just a few weeks before its construction. So how does it connect to the Table Rock cross, a familiar and even comforting sight for many Boiseans? I recently traced the history on the City Cast Boise podcast , and went further back to pre-colonization, when the mountain that bears Table Rock was a spiritual symbol of another kind.
In October , a Boise police officer began investigating men who were allegedly meeting in public parks to have sex with teenage boys. The Idaho Statesman covered the allegations almost daily, and the investigation quickly expanded to consenting adults. The Boise Police Department hired a private investigator in the case, and 16 men were charged over the next two years.
The moral panic brought national media attention, especially when the scandal increasingly focused on well-known men in consensual gay relationships. Plus, the whole situation broke families up and caused a lot of grief in Boise. In December , amidst the scandal, the Jaycees dug the hole that has since cradled the cross on top of Table Rock. By Jan. At the time, that land was owned by the Idaho Department of Corrections.
A ruling against a similar cross in Eugene, Ore. The news made its way to influential Chicago-based atheist Rob Sherman who delivered a speech at Boise State drumming up support for legal action to remove the cross. The Table Rock cross is commonly referred to as a beacon of shared values among Boiseans. Its proximity to the downtown St. Before the cross, Table Rock was a sandstone quarry that employed masses of immigrants, who plied rock that was used in the development of downtown Boise buildings.
Before that, it was a gathering place for the Shoshone, Bannock, and Northern Paiute peoples. Those ancestors were forcibly removed from the valley, and never signed over the land they had called home for millenia. Throughout the Americas, Christianity and the symbol of the cross were used to justify genocide and the forced relocation and internment of Indigenous people.
