In 1998, a nonprofit called the Utah Highway Patrol Association with a mission to serve troopers and their families came up with an idea to honor their state’s fallen. Let’s build them memorials, they said. Let’s erect 12-foot high crosses with six-foot long cross bars that include the fallen troopers’ names, dates of death, pictures, and biographical information, and let’s put them along the very roads they patrolled so all who drive by will, at a glance, see the sacrifice and understand the significance.
And the significance, to the UHPA, was four-fold: to remind other troopers that one of their own gave life in service; to remind travelers that a trooper died while making the roads safe for all; to extend honor to the surviving families; and to promote safe driving.
