Roadside grave markers: how did Montana (and ONLY Montana) get them to have a certain look?

Among the numerous keywords I deploy here, I use “rural” far less than I initially expected when I developed this blog sixteen years ago.  Sure, rural America has comprised an element of more than 45 articles over the years: not bad, but nowhere near as much as I planned.  After all, the American Dirt banner also features a landscape of a country road stretching over a gentle hill into the horizon (flipped 180° of course).  Even if 80% of Americans dwell in urbanized areas per the latest census estimates, the overwhelming majority of the nation’s land area is still steadfastly rural: over 97%, according to the Thoreau Institute’s interpretation of US Census Bureau data.  That said, rural America seems to be the primary home for the cenotaphs—those roadside grave markers that commemorate a death without the implying the deceased is interred at that same site, or anywhere nearby.  When I first explored the presence of a ghost bike in Albuquerque a few years ago (and ghost bikes are absolutely a type of cenotaph, since no one is buried under the white-painted bikes), I noted, in the same article, how many rural grave markers I saw elsewhere in New Mexico: specifically on the sparsely populated US Highway 84 linking Santa Fe and Taos.  But now, driving across the even more rural state of Montana, I marvel at a heretofore unseen encounter: publicly sanctioned, uniform roadside grave markers.

I went out on a limb in exploring this topic, but it only took a few miles meandering through Montana during a recent trip to notice these sad reminders of the need to drive defensively.  Memorials have been common across roadside America for decades, but they usually come in a variety of sizes, are not always white, occasionally involve a different shape (the inverted U of a grave is probably the next common), and may feature a multitude of texts or adornments: names, dates, photos, a favorite quote, a Bible verse.  But not in Montana.  The roadside grave markers all look exactly like the one in the photo, taken a bit east of Missoula on Interstate 90.  They’re about as simple as a cenotaph can be: two rectangular pieces of metal painted white, pinned to intersect in a cross shape, all mounted by the same sturdy, angled stanchion used for highway signage across the country.  

The uniformity of the grave markers prompted me to risk an assumption in calling them “publicly sanctioned”—a risk that proved well-founded.  My critical weasel word, not surprisingly, is “sanctioned”, in that the State of Montana authorizes and allows this.  If I had taken the State’s relationship to these crosses a step further and assumed “publicly funded”, I would have been wrong.  It’s not the State putting up these roadside grave markers.  It’s the American Legion.

The century-old fraternal organization for war veterans and service members, with nearly 15,000 posts worldwide, helped to birth the consistent appearance to roadside grave markers scattered throughout the Treasure State.  Floyd Eaheart, a member of Hellgate Post #27 just a bit down the road in Missoula, devised the idea after learning of six casualties from a nearby car accident over the Labor Day weekend in 1952.  His goal was to promote road safety wherever fatal accident sites took place, and the state’s 1952 equivalent to the Department of Transportation officially approved the program, thereby permitting Eaheart and his team to install crosses in the right-of-way space immediately adjacent to roads.  To this day, the Montana Highway Fatality Marker operates without public funding, depending exclusively on volunteers and donations through the American Legion.  Veterans and supporters paint them white, regardless of what type of scrap metal they use; they also maintain the old ones, ensuring consistency of appearance.  To boost the program’s visibility, in January 2007 the Director of Montana’s DOT referenced the program on official state highway maps and at all highway entrances into Montana.  Rules to ensure uniformity require that the crosses will NOT use reflective materials; additional decorations by family members are discouraged; the State cannot provide the materials; and certain metrics regulate height, weight, and placement along the road.  

Most importantly in terms of informing the public, only one post will exist per accident, hoisting multiple markers (cenotaphs) for each fatality.  So, for this example near Missoula, two separate accidents took place at essentially the same location, with one fatality each.

But if a situation arises where four people perish in an accident, four cenotaphs will protrude from the same steel “U” stanchion, like in this photo, which highlights the gravity of a particular car accident.  The American Legion posts responsible for these fatality markers always contact family members before constructing crosses, and, on the rare occasion when family does not want a cenotaph (or seeks one taken down), the Legion honors their wishes.

Over 2,500 Montana roadside grave markers stand, courtesy of the American Legion’s efforts.  Among some of the more meandering highways in Montana, like US 191 south of Bozeman, these roadside grave markers punctuate the side of the road every mile or so.  It’s sadly unsurprising, given US 191 in Montana circumscribes the western fringes of Wyoming’s Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, while also leading to the popular Montana ski resort community of Big Sky.  No doubt a high percentage of the motorists in this area are tourists, inexperienced with navigating rural mountain roads.  But Montana’s track record for per-capita roadside accidents has long been inauspicious: in the early 2000s, it routinely ranked as the third-highest in the country, behind only Wyoming and Mississippi, two other mostly rural states.  And its rate of drunken-driving deaths was highest in the nation—and growing.  More recent stats—from USDOT’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System in 2022—show some improvement for Montana: at least ten states now have worse per capita fatality rates (including New Mexico), and three states have worse rates of alcohol-influenced road deaths.  These changes are not radical, and the drop in alcohol-related deaths in particular may owe more to statistical anomaly; not all states diligently measure BAC of crash casualties.  That said, roadside grave markers in Montana carry with them a uniform, consistent message that is absent from the case-by-case, grassroots commemorative approach in most states. 

I’m not certain if Montana is the de facto birthplace of the roadside-white-cross-as-cenotaph, since the practice has been widespread throughout the country for decades.  Most states just lack the centrally organizing force.  Family and friends of loved ones must build the cenotaph: cross, grave, or ghost bike.  Only about half of the states—mostly concentrated in the West—offer roadside tribute site programs.   A similar percentage of states have laws that prohibit them, though only some states overtly enforce these laws and actively remove them.  (Most states with regulations will not remove cenotaphs unless they pose a distraction, obstruction, or safety hazard to other motorists.)  The data tracking these memorials is spotty, with sites like Roadside Tribute attempting to pull up the slack.  But only the state with roadside grave markers has a dedicated institution committed to installing, maintaining, and monitoring them, thereby giving Montanans easy access to a geographic array of crash fatality data.  Roadside grave markers are a powerful branding tool in Montana, without ever becoming so embellished and ostentatious that they distract.  The big sky is already there to do that.