[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - (man_made=cross)

[John F. Eldredge]

Volker Schmidt <voschix at gmail.com> wrote:

> I  suppose that in non-christian-majority areas of the world mountain
> peaks
> are marked by other objects (I confess my complete ignorance). If such
> objects exist, it would be nice to include them in the new tagging
> scheme
> for peak "crosses".
> 
> On 21 September 2012 23:11, Friedrich Volkmann <bsd at volki.at> wrote:
> 
> > This had been a draft for a long time, it is rendered by the hiking
> map (
> > www.wanderreitkarte.de), and someone urged me to take it "to the
> vote
> > state as soon as possible", so it doesn't seem completely wrong that
> I set
> > it to RFC by now.
> >
> >
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/**wiki/Tag:man_made%3Dcross<http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:man_made%3Dcross>
> >
> > It's about those kind of crosses where historic=wayside_cross
> doesn't seem
> > appropriate.
> >
> > --
> > Friedrich K. Volkmann       http://www.volki.at/
> > Adr.: Davidgasse 76-80/14/10, 1100 Wien, Austria
> >
> > ______________________________**_________________
> > Tagging mailing list
> > Tagging at openstreetmap.org
> >
> http://lists.openstreetmap.**org/listinfo/tagging<http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging>
> >

Interesting.  I traveled some in Europe as a teenager, in the 1970'#, and I remember seeing a lot of roadside shrines in Austria and Switzerland, but I don't remember of hearing of a general pattern of having crosses to mark mountain peaks.  Is this custom of recent origin?

I live in the USA, which is majority-Christian, but am not aware of any such custom here.  While you do sometimes see crosses (usually in groups of three) on hilltops near roads, the most you are likely to find on a mountaintop is a small survey marker at the official highest point.

-- 
John F. Eldredge --  john at jfeldredge.com
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria