The Cross in the Woods

Just off M-68 in Indian River, the Cross in the Woods rises above a pine-covered Catholic shrine. The Diocese of Gaylord currently lists it as a national shrine. Its centerpiece is easy to measure even if its place in the record books is not: the Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum describes a 55-foot redwood cross with a 28-foot bronze figure of Christ. The shrine gives the figure’s weight as seven tons and its arm span as 21 feet.

The shrine calls it the largest crucifix in the world. That is the shrine’s designation, not an independently certified record in the sources reviewed here. The measurements carry the story better. Its own history says workers custom-cut the Oregon redwood, assembled the cross from two pieces, and raised it on Calvary Hill in 1954. Fredericks’s bronze figure was cast in Norway and attached in 1959.

The grounds are more than one sculpture. Seven smaller shrines sit along paved walkways, and the site also has a chapel, an outdoor worship space, and a museum of dolls dressed in the habits of religious communities. The cross and outdoor shrines can be viewed 365 days a year during daylight hours. Gift-shop and indoor hours change, so the outdoor grounds are the part of a visit you can plan around most easily.

People come here to pray, to study Fredericks’s work, or simply to stand at the foot of something much larger than it looks from the road. None of those reasons needs a world record.