Note: If, in no other previous posts, you haven’t clicked the links – I urge you to at least click the bolded links and the photos.
A question that I have been turning over and over in my mind is this: What should happen to sites of private cultus when the State comes into ownership of them?
This question spilled into my mind after an abrupt mental crash between a project I am working on and the Mojave WWI Memorial news coverage.
WWI Memorial – This story has been well covered in The Wild Hunt, but for the few of you who haven’t read it, I’ll give a Cliff Notes version. Back in the 1930′s a group of WWI Vets pooled their money and bought some land in the Mojave desert and built a memorial in honor of their friends who died in the war. They made the memorial in the shape of a Christian Cross. Years later, the Vets gave the land to the Federal Parks Service so the Mojave Desert Preserve could be created with the understanding the memorial would stay. In 2001, a lawsuit was filed to get the memorial removed on grounds that keeping it signified an unconstitutional government endorsement of Christianity. Until all the legal fun is over, the memorial was to be boarded up. A month ago, the memorial was stolen.
I didn’t give much thought at all to this story, since I didn’t care if the memorial was allowed to stay or if it had to go, except for the reaction of some in the Pagan community to the memorial’s theft.
Project – The project that I have been working on for a few years, which is now getting ready to become a reality, is to create a public Hellenic Temple. There have been Hellenic Temples built in people’s homes and in their backyards, but there hasn’t been a publicly accessible Hellenic temple created in the USA yet. If you know differently, please let me know. Insurance costs, ADA compliance, having the temple open to anyone without them needing to call ahead to get it unlocked, and financing are all issues that have held our religious community back from realizing this dream. Keep your fingers crossed or send me some good vibes, because I think we are finally ready to do this.
See how this generated my question? Neither did I until I read this about the WWI Memorial -“was a place of reflection for many vets who retreated to the desert in part to recover from severe lung diseases caused by mustard gas attacks during the Great War. An annual Easter service is held there, but until recently only locals knew about it.”
Which, to me, demonstrates a thriving cultus connected with this memorial and where it is located. Cultus, according to Carla Antonaccio, Professor of Classical Studies at Wesleyan University -
” is a pattern of ritual behavior in connection with specific objects, within a framework of spatial and temporal coordinates. Ritual behavior would include (but not necessarily be limited to) prayer, sacrifice, votive offerings, competitions, processions and construction of monuments. Some degree of recurrence in place and repetition over time of ritual action is necessary for cult to be enacted, to be practiced.”
Cultus is a thriving part of many Pagan religions. We have sacred springs, stone altars, statues, rocks, and other objects erected in sacred locations that we feel a special spiritual connection to. We return over and over, year after year, praying, laying down our offerings, reveling in a Divine presence that seems stronger there.
WWI Memorial in the Mojave National Preserve before it was ordered covered by court order.
Which is, apparently, what happened with the memorial. Each year, Christians would travel out to the memorial and worship. Veterans would stand before the cross, honoring those lost and asking for the gift of peace in their hearts. They brought offerings, burned incense, and sang sacred songs. They prayed for those who died and they prayed to their God, reveling in his divine presence. This continued for decades, with the crowds of worshipers slowly growing, drawn to the site. Then the lawsuit happened and their site of cultus was boarded up, blocked from their view.
Which is why I am wondering what could happen to our sites of private cultus if the State comes into ownership of them. Would they be boarded up? Would we be blocked from worship at them as our coreligionists are in Greece with the ancient temples? Will the ACLU file suit to dismantle them? Can age, beauty, or number of worshipers protect and preserve them?
The Temple of Goddess Spirituality dedicated to Sekhmet
Temple dedicated to Sekhmet, Nevada
Built in 1993, this small and peaceful temple sits at the edge of the Nevada Test Site and has been maintained by Wiccan priestesses who assist in the celebration of solar and lunar rituals, handfastings, baby blessings, and more. In 1992, Genevieve Vaughan gave the land to the Shoshone tribe, but the temple continued to operate as before.
With the temple so close to the Nevada Test Site, only 3 miles from an Air Force base, and a thriving nuclear bomb history tourism industry – it’s not hard to imagine the land voluntarily or involuntarily coming into the hands of the Federal Parks Service. What would happen to this temple, this modern site of cultus, if the government was granted possession of the lands around it? Would the temple be destroyed or boarded up? Would it violate the Constitution of the United States to use tax money to maintain it?
Serpent Mound, Adams County, Ohio
What’s the difference between the Cross in the Mojave desert and the Serpent Mound in Ohio? Is it age or historical value that grant Serpent Mound its unchallenged protection? The less threatening perception of Native American religions vs the position of power Christianity enjoys? Is it that older is seen to have more value and significance than that which is newly created? The last question should cause any Wiccan pause since detractors point to the newness of Wicca as a sign of its lack of credibility.
Temples of Damanhur, Italy
Started in 1978 by Falco Airaudi who acted on a vision he had while a child, this series of temples were carved out of the ground over 14 years. The temples are a place of meditation for the religious group known as Damanhurians. In 1992, the Italian police demanded entry into the secret temples claiming they would blow up the area if they were not allowed in. After seeing the beauty of the temples, the Italian government seized control of the property. All building was to cease, but the Damanhurians were allowed to continue the artwork. Today, the Damanhurians have a thriving community surrounding the temples and the government allows them access to the temples when public tours are not being conducted.
The Hall of Earth within the Temples of Damanhur, Italy
Yet I wonder – what if the temples has been a bit less stunning? Less beautiful in the execution? Would the government have protected them? Allowed the Damanhurians continued access? Or would they have carried through with their threat to implode them?
I am filled with questions and no answers. I don’t know if legal arguments over cases like the WWI Memorial can or ever should include the value of sites of modern cultus. How can you define the difference between a place that has such special spiritual significance that it draws worshipers and a “typical” religious building that does not have that location specific spiritual connection? Or is there a difference? Or does the worship itself, over the years, imbue the location with the scared? And should governments concern themselves with protecting those places of cultus when they come into their possession?
The Henge at Stone City Pagan Sanctuary, California
Over and over, as my mind is consumed by visions of a public Hellenic Temple made reality and I think about the places of cultus already in existence, I keep wondering what could happen to our sites of private cultus if the State comes into ownership of them and what can we do to increase the odds that they survive and are protected for generations to come. Or should they be destroyed out of concern that it creates an endorsement of Paganism by our government, if that were to happen? And if that is the case, then should other sites of religious worship on federal land, such as the Serpent Mounds of Ohio where Native Americans are again practicing their religion, be destroyed or blocked off?
Cara, thanks for a thoughtful post. If the typical life cycle that concerns you is that a private group builds a cultus center on its own land, the group flourishes and then comes into hard times, and the site goes through changes of ownership and finally falls into public hands — then I would suggest that the original group designate a receiver for the property in the event the temple or whatever needs to be shut down. This receiver could be established by the Pagan community at large, to be more resilient than any individual coven or cultus site.
The more I think on this, the more a line from “the Art of Peace” I am reminded of:
“One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train.”
It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to establish a Hellenic temple, but you bring up a lot of great points and consequently challenges. Would registering the temple site and organizational body as a business prevent the government from being allowed such options? Can they still claim grounds owned and operated by non-profit organizations registered with the government?
Yes, they can. It’s called the doctrine of Eminent Domain. If the public good and gain outweighs the needs of the property holder, the government is entitled to take it. While this doesn’t sound fair, the government has to pay for the property according to a realty assessment, so they don’t just say “screw you” and give you the shaft. Mostly, the application of the doctrine is only initiated when the government starts a large public works project, like a highway or a dam, which produces jobs, stimulates local economy, and in the end, really does more good for more people. As far as I’d guess, the government wouldn’t go out of it’s way to scrap a religious or historic site citing eminent domain.
That being said, these sort of things never become a problem until some clown with a chip on his shoulder (what’s up with all these militant atheists?) whines to the ACLU, and the government has to board up a display which in reality isn’t doing any harm to anyone. But, that’s what you get when you put individual rights before the good of the people or the State.
The largest issue with this, is of course, that certain people within the government decides how much is ‘fair’, and you don’t really have any way of stopping those people, or forcing them to use another valuation. So if they decide that your ancestral home is worth a piddling $75k, thats all you get, with zero recourse.
Those pictures of the Temples of Damanhur are jaw-droppingly stunning.
Damn straight – as long as they’re not structurally dangerous to anything on the surface, wiping them out for an ideological or legal technicality would be horrendous.
The post is a good one and raises a number of questions, but I think that some of these things are in different categories. The serpent mounds are an archaeological site, not used for worship, and from what I understand, the tribes who used them died off long ago.
As far as the temples in Greece are concerned, Greek laws are very different than US laws and this needs to be taken into account. The Greek Orthodox Church, as I’m sure you’re very aware, is extremely anti-Pagan and, being the official church of Greece, this factors into the situation very deeply.
The cross erected by the veterans as a WWI memorial may have been intended to honor their friends, but was even then no doubt originally intended as specifically Christian in focus and function. Part of the lawsuit regarding this includes an argument that the cross is, somehow “secular,” and this is a load of bullshit. I don’t think it should be removed but I also don’t think it should be regarded as non-Christian and I also believe that in such cases, other religions should be able to erect monuments for their own fallen members if they so choose.
When considering putting up new monuments on public ground, I think it’s pretty obvious that separation of church and state should be observed. When a monument is originally erected on private land, it can come into conflict with the law but, as Baruch said, an organization with enough resources to put together a public temple should also ideally have the foresight to designate what happens to the land and the buildings if they are no longer able to maintain them, and this means extra layers of paperwork, networking among organizations to make certain that passing the land or buildings along to sympathetic hands is possible, and doing one’s best to ensure that financing remains in place beyond the lifetime of the founders of the temple.
These are hard things. If a community cares enough about a temple or a monument, then they will very likely rally and get together the funds to preserve it if worse comes to worst. Unless and until laws change, the land’s new owner — public or private — has the right to do pretty much what it wants with any structure that isn’t, strictly speaking, a national archaeological treasure and sometimes even if it is. We’re seeing the results of that with the issues surrounding the motorway being pushed through Tara right now in Ireland.
If a religious group wants to maintain a cult site in perpetuity then they have to have the resources to do so. Throughout human history it is just a matter of course for cult sites to fall into disuse and disrepair or to change hands as fortunes of various cults wax and wane. I don’t see how that is a problem except in a case where a site is forcibly seized.
Any group who builds a cult site will only be able to maintain control of that site for so long as that group has the resources to maintain and staff it. If for whatever reason a group has to, or just chooses to, turn the site over to the government or to anyone else, the original group obviously no longer has any say so over what happens on the site. How is that not obvious?
Bottom line: if you have the resources to maintain your site you don’t have to worry about what might happen is The Guvmint takes it over.
As far as the Mojave desert site goes — wasn’t this public land all along? No one has the right to just erect religious symbols of their choice on public land. Quite the opposite.
Also the “news story” Cara links to about the WWI memorial is at the website of some outfit calling itself Renovo Media, which cannot be taken seriously. None of their articles or editorials even provide the actual names of the “writers”. Rather they are all signed by “Jim” or “Kellie”. The story Cara linked to is by Kellie. Who is Kellie? No news story is worth anything if you don’t know who wrote it. That site is a joke.
Some idea of where Renovo Media is coming from is indicated by the fact that the article links to a video produced by the Liberty Legal Institute, a far-right Christian fundamentalist group whose website is worth a look. Just do a google search on “Liberty Legal Institute”.
Notes you may find interesting – 1934 VFW Post 2884 bought the land surrounding Sunrise Rock and erected the memorial. It did not become federal land until 1994.
Renovo Media – if you prefer a different source that notes that Easter services were held at the Memorial or that the WWI Veterans who built the memorial suffered from mustard gas, here is the identical phrasing from CNN.
CNN – http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/05/supreme.court.veterans.cross/index.html
… was a place of reflection for many vets who retreated to the desert in part to recover from severe lung diseases caused by mustard gas attacks during the Great War. An annual Easter service is held there, but until recently only locals knew about it.
The VFW is supposed to be an organization for all veterans and it has a non-discrimination policy with respect to religion. It is also federally “chartered” by order of Congress. So it is highly doubtful that the VFW ever had any business in the first place erecting Christian religious symbols as a “War Memorial”.
A Christian Cross is not a War Memorial for all veterans. It is at best a memorial for Christian veterans. That is true regardless of who owns the land the cross is erected on.
If a Christian group wants to erect a Christian monument on land that they own, then that monument can remain unmolested for as long as that Christian group is able to maintain the land and the monument.
Anyone who has a gripe with the Guvmint acquiring land for National Parks needs to take that up with Teddy Roosevelt.
None of this has anything whatsoever to do with any modern day Pagan groups who wish to construct Temples or any other kind of facility. There is no connection at all.
Why are some Pagans so eager to find any pretext for making common cause with right-wing Christian fundamentalists?
“Why are some Pagans so eager to find any pretext for making common cause with right-wing Christian fundamentalists?”
Maybe because some of us have experienced so much nausea and vomiting from dealing with right(or left)-wing Pagan fundamentalists?
Apulieus wrote:
“None of this has anything whatsoever to do with any modern day Pagan groups who wish to construct Temples or any other kind of facility. There is no connection at all.”
It does, actually – or did you not read about what happened to the group in Italy? (After all, since this is the internet, I would assume an international audience).
“Why are some Pagans so eager to find any pretext for making common cause with right-wing Christian fundamentalists?”
That’s odd, I don’t recall anything in the post about that…a discussion of the underhanded methods of certain fundamentalists, certainly, and analysis of methods of dealing with it, but I’m not sure that I can read into it “making common cause with right-wing Christian fundamentalists”.
I think your question of “Why should we care what happens legally to Christians?” is a valid one.
I would phrase it in another way, though. “Why should we care how courts rule and legislative bodies create law regarding religion?” The courts, and legislative bodies, don’t limit themselves to just one religion when they get involved. What affects one, affects all. So when a court ruling or a new law is proposed that involves religion or any religious group, I pay attention and try to access how it will affect us.
Looking at this example, if SCOTUS had decided that the monument needed to be removed, this is how I could see it affecting us by comparing the WWI memorial to a place that is increasingly becoming a place of worship and pilgrimage for Contemporary Pagans – the Parthenon in Nashville.
Both are absolutely religious in design – one is a Christian Cross the other is a Greek Temple. Neither were created or designed as a place of worship, but both have become places of worship. The WWI memorial is popular for Easter worship and the Parthenon is becoming popular for several Hellenic Pagan festivals and as a site of pilgrimage and offering. Both have also been rebuilt and altered over the years. Both are also places where people go for non-religious reasons. The WWI memorial for those who wish to honor those that died and the Parthenon as cultural center. And both are on State owned land.
If the argument is that religious symbols, buildings, texts/plaques cannot exist on State owned land and must be removed or destroyed – how can the continued existence of the Parthenon be justified?
There can be times to find common cause with other religions when courts and legislative bodies are placing limits on the exercise of religion. Also – There may be a valid reason that you can understand and support for the proposed limitation, but to insist that these limitations shouldn’t be examined for wider ramifications to our community because you don’t like the particular religion involved is short-sighted.
“news story”
If you go to the bottom of the “news story” it states: “Source: CNN” and provides a link to the original CNN article High court to decide if war memorial violates Constitution which Renovo seems to have copied paragraphs of verbatim into their web site article and paraphrased others. Compare & contrast the two articles but the factual info presented in both pretty well agree.
public land all along
“In 1994, 1.6 million acres of desert — including the land with the cross on it — was transferred to the National Park Service.” (see CNN article). Prior to that, it was in the East Mojave National Scenic Area.
Frank Buono, a former deputy superintendent of the preserve, stated “He [Buono] acknowledges that he could not tell at first that the cross was on federal land — about 90 percent of the 1.6 million acres is owned by the government” (Washington Post article) , so the people who originally put it up may (or may not) have known they were doing so on public land.
Sorry, Cara, I didn’t see your edit until after I’d already posted my comment. Nice catch about the land belonging to the VFW post when the monument was first erected.
Also, I note the suit was not originally filed because people objected to the cross, but rather was filed in 1999 after a Buddhist group tried to also erect a memorial and were refused permission (Washington Post). So for 65 years no one objected; it was only after someone else was denied that this suit was filed. Perhaps instead of filing this suit they should have instead filed one against the Parks department for religious discrimination?
Also, compare the two 2005 cases ‘Van Orden v. Perry’ versus ‘McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky’ for more splitting of hairs by SCOTUS in the separation of church vs. state argument.
Wooly: “Perhaps instead of filing this suit they should have instead filed one against the Parks department for religious discrimination?”
That would’d've been the most reasonable thing to do. The cross was an appropriate symbol for the people it’s intended to honor, not a statement about the ground it was planted on. I can see valid arguments that the cross was grandfathered, and that a flood of similar structures in public parks would detract from the parks themselves as untouched natural areas.
I consider a memorial to the deceased to have a little bit different flavor than a regular temple or worship/veneration structure, and think the theft of the WWI memorial symbol is pathetically juvenile spiteful, and trashy. We have places that were small family burial sites from a century or more past, when it was usual to bury people on home ground. My mother’s family has burials on a property that has changed hands a few times in the last 80 years, but we’ve been lucky and the owners haven’t been game to dig it all up. One wonders if a non-Christian were to purchase the land, would they insist on bulldozing the markers because they have crosses, doves, and angels on them?
The buildings and original property lines in these places are usually long gone, and I can think of two right off that have no living posterity that anyone has found. Some of them are now part of municipal land; there’s one in Maryland that’s part of a busy traffic pattern. Most of them have some kind of Christian religious symbol on them – is anyone calling for them to be demolished or removed? Maybe the trick is to make sure there’s a body interred on the spot. (cues BEG tongue-in-cheek Powerpoint presentation about sacrifices to consecrate sacred structures)
For the rest, I’d hate to see any structure that has artistic, historical or archaeological value destroyed merely because it has religious significance, especially when I suspect the motive for doing so is more about financial profit or having a pissing match than changes in practicality or functionality.
Although OT for the purpose of this post – I thought people might find of interest some history about WWI memorials.
Each war seems to have some kind of symbol that is seen over and over in its monuments to the dead. For WWI that symbol is the Lone Cross of Sacrifice and there are Lone Crosses as WWI monuments all over the USA, Canada, and Europe. Usually they are a very large cross, standing alone, and they may or may not have a bronze sword (hilt up) attached to them.
The Lone Cross erected in the Mojave is no where near as grand as the marble Lone Crosses in places like Arlington National Cemetery – which is what started me thinking about if beauty comes into play when the government decides if something is “historical” enough to protect. If the Mojave Lone Cross had been made out of marble or bronze, would that make a difference?
I wonder – because sometimes Pagan sacred objects don’t look like “standard” sacred objects. Or they may not look as grand. I think the Henge at Stone City is extremely impressive, but it isn’t the same as Stonehenge.
And I wonder about ancient sacred places. Tara was mentioned by Erynn. There are other (less ancient) sacred places that are destroyed because, I believe, they just aren’t that “pretty” looking.
Sadly, Tara isn’t even being destroyed because it’s not pretty enough. It’s simply “inconvenient” for people who want to drive from point a to point b more quickly. Future generations will curse ours for the damage we’ve done — assuming there are that many left.
A really good post, Cara, and I’m glad to see someone taking this angle.
For me, these issues of sacred-site maintenance and protection also lead me back to questions about land ownership more generally. I worry about what consequences might result if, as some previous commenters have suggested, only those who can afford to purchase and maintain land privately (and secure its ownership indefinitely into the future) are able to freely practice their religious or spiritual traditions. Doesn’t such a view eventually result in the only “freedom of religion” being of a kind that can be purchased? Realistically, this has been exactly the case throughout much of history, especially the history of Christianity through the Middle Ages until the present as various churches, acting as socio-political institutions, have acquired and accumulated wealth and land to be passed down within the tradition. And as you point out, we see funding and land ownership as a (perhaps the) central issue in the success of establishing open public places of worship for non-Christian religious traditions.
I’m not sure what solutions or alternatives there are, honestly, in a country where there is no longer such a thing as unowned or common property. I like to imagine, in an ideal future, a continent scattered with sacred sites and places of pilgrimage, dedicated to many different religious sects and gods, in which no one would have the legal right to deny the establishing of a Buddhist temple or a Druidic circle or a Christian cross on land which is sacred to that respective community, a future in which the establishing of such sites would happen organically and with the consent and support of those who live and work that land. We do not live in that kind of world, however, and so we find ourselves in the energy-sucking quagmire of legal nit-picking, where a slip of paper with a name on it can change hands and suddenly render a place of worship illegal. I think that’s a sad state of affairs, whether it is a Christian war memorial or a Hellenic temple that pays the price in the ensuing shuffle.
Funding and land ownership. We come at this from opposite ends, but we both still arrive at the same problem that is a real stumper.
One of the reasosn (although not the reason) why I’ve been working for so long to get a public Hellenic temple built is because of how having a physical spiritual structure affects a religious community.
I’ve been talking with people in the Hindu community in the Twin Cities. They have a beautiful, large temple and a growing, thriving, and vibrant religious community. Which is a big change from how it was in the 1980′s. I asked them how they grew their community and this, badly rephrased and condensed, is what they said.
They said that if you care for the Gods, they care for you. Part of caring for the gods is building them a home, making them a physical place within your community. That home is a temple. When you do that, the Gods call to others and they come. The Gods infuse the area with their blessings. The Gods bring life and strengthen the bonds of community.
In the early 80′s there were almost no Hindus in the Twin Cities. Just a few families. Three families put in $5000 each to buy an old church and they made that into the first temple. After word got out that the temple was being worked on, other Hindus came to help. Some stayed. Other non-Hindus, curious about what was going on, started to learn about Hinduism and later the Gods called to them. They said that it was a very organic and natural thing that happened – but the Gods and the temple and a thriving community are all tied together. But the Gods must be given a home first, and shown honor, before they bring their blessings.
Anyway…after talking with them and talking with the local Jewish community (who had much the same view on God, temples, and community) creating a home for the Gods has gained in importance for me.
Thought-provoking post. My take is this: some public lands are appropriate for private religious use while others are not. Parks and other public areas where citizens gather for various reasons should be free for religious use (for ALL religions, not preferred religions). Think about it, if that weren’t true there would be FAR less Pagan gatherings as many of them are in public parks. Where I take exception is when anything religious is attached to any public land that has any apparatus of government on it. That should be off-limits. Also, private religious expression on public land should not be funded nor otherwise supported by the government. As long as those conditions are met, I think religious sites should be left alone. However, I think apuleius brings up some good points about the nature of the VFW. Then there is the Scalia secular cross argument to worry about. It’s a tangle.
There is quite a bit to think about – and like I said – I have NO answers on the wider issues, only questions. I just think we need to carefully examine any laws or rulings that touch on religion to see how they may affect us (if they do).
VFW – The group may have been “chartered” by Congress, but they are no different from any other “free association” group. It is merely a symbolic honorific. Other groups chartered by congress, The Boy Scouts of America, The Girl Scouts of America, and about 100 other fraternal or patriotic associations.
Some VFW Posts came out in strong support when we were trying to get the Pentacle approved by the VA. When they did that, they were true to their mission – which is to help and support Vets of foreign wars. They weren’t do it because they favored one religion over another. Likewise, they have consistently come out in support of maintaining any and all war memorials, no matter what they look like.
BUT – although they do not deny membership based on religion, they are a very Christian group. Part of it is their membership age, which is pretty high. They are also a very misogynist group. Not many women join, nor are they encouraged to join. And the “Ladies Auxiliaries” groups names are nasty – our local one is named “The Crotch Bunnies.” You haven’t lived until you’ve seen 70 year old ladies marching in a 4th of July parade hold a “Crotch Bunnies” sign.
But yeah – it is a tangle.
If you want my best guess – I think the reason the Supreme Court has been both taking cases like this WHILE doing their best to duck setting serious case law is that they are trying to nudge Congress into action to sort this mess out. If the Supreme Court would take a hard line and say no religious symbols on State land – so many things would need to be destroyed. Like the Eternal Flame on Kennedy’s tomb – clearly a Roman Pagan religious symbol. The Parthenon in Nashville. Every cross headstone in public cemeteries. TONS of artwork throughout the USA. So we need Congress to clean up some of the laws and guidelines – and perhaps take a look at our constitution – so that the SCOTUS can then make a clearer interp without going too far.
I just came across this interesting discussion – I have a sort of side track comment that you may find interesting. Serpent Mound in Ohio that you mention above is not actually “owned” or operated by the government (and never was), but by several non-profits and volunteer groups in cooperation. The sacred site is being kept open by these groups to any who want to worship there or take a look at the fascinating archaeological features, and there is nothing the government can really say or do one way or the other.
In this case, the non-profit “owns” the site, and keeps it open with a small parking fee and donated funds.. also a good answer, I believe, to the worrisome problems of tanking federal and state budgets.
I’m not sure quite what I am recommending here, except that to point out that there are some interesting alternatives available for the management of sacred sites, and this is one example of a sort of hybrid between public and private.
I’d also like to mention that we in Ohio have another interesting problem – many ancient sacred sites are on PRIVATE land, with no sure way to access them.