Memorials, Roadside

Roadside memorials may be created by individuals or groups spontaneously or as a planned activity. Memorials often function as a way to communicate with the deceased as well as a means through which mourners express their grief while also memorializing the deceased. In the United States, such practices have been documented in newspaper accounts and diaries from the 19th century, as well as literary sources and newspapers in the 20th century. This practice has been reported in a number of countries around the world, including Mexico, Canada, Greece, and Australia.

Roadside memorials mark the site where a fatality has occurred. Although usually the result of an automobile collision, the fatality may have resulted from other causes (such as murder or from natural causes while traveling or exercising).

Memorials are utilized by mourners as a way of coping with deaths that are sudden and tragic in nature. The most common components of the memorial are a cross and artificial flowers, although numerous other artifacts may be utilized as well. Some of the functions served by these memorials are to prolong the memory of the deceased in a public place, to communicate with the deceased, and to transmit a message to society, serving as both an expression of mourning and an attempt to warn others of the dangers associated with driving.

History

The placing of markers at the site of a death is reported to date back hundreds of years to Europe in general and to Spain in particular. Controversies related to roadside memorials typically revolve around the rights of mourners to place a private marker on public lands or on public right-of-ways.

In this era, the deceased are not buried at the site, but the marking is a notice that something [Page 724]significant happened on that site. Roadside memorials almost always hold some religious significance, although that significance is more likely to be general in nature rather than a religious ritual prescribed by one's faith. An early practice in England involved cutting in the stone or scratching in the dust the sign of the cross at the site of an accident or a murder. This practice was not only to pacify the ghost of the deceased, but to keep the ghost from haunting the location, and to allow passersby to continue to remark the spot. For example, in Mexican Catholic tradition, the memorial marks a spot where someone died without receiving Last Rights, and thus serves as a reminder to passersby to stop and pray for the deceased.

The use of crucitas (or little crosses) has been traced back to Spain and the conquest of the New World. In Spanish tradition, crosses by the side of the road marked the resting place for those who were carrying a coffin to be buried. The tradition of placing roadside crosses to mark the spot where an untimely death occurred has survived in South Texas and followed Mexican-American migration to other parts of the country. Not limited to Mexican or Catholic tradition, death memorials have also been used by the Tohono O'odham tribe of southern Arizona to mark the locations of violent or “bad” deaths for several decades. Indeed, roadside memorials are placed by a wide variety of people representing various religious and cultural backgrounds.

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