X’S Helping Put County On The Map Mysterious Crosses Have A Simple Explanation - Or So We’re Told
They look like apocalyptic helicopter drop zones: giant white crosses painted on roadways and draped in plastic across grassy farms.
No, they aren’t landing directions for mysterious black helicopters. They are signposts for a mammoth state mapping and surveying project.
“I figured they were either for aerial photography or we were being invaded by people from Mars,” said Coeur d’Alene businessman Bruce Winters.
Right the first time.
Saturday, a plane from Missoula flew over Interstate 90 between Fernan and Ramsey Road to photograph the road and surrounding ground. The plane followed 47 12-foot-by-12-foot X’s as markers. Some of the crosses were painted on streets. Others were staked into fields, marking a quarter-mile corridor along each side of the road.
The pictures will accompany satellite surveys to determine the exact horizontal and vertical contours of the region. The Idaho Transportation Department will use the data for road projects.
“When they decide to design a new road, it will tell them how much fill they need, how much to cut out of a hillside, that sort of thing,” said Donald L. Rose, a surveyor with contractor Meckel Engineering and Surveying. “It’s state-of-the-art, the most sophisticated way of getting that information.”
The crosses are common in survey projects but typically are smaller. Because the Transportation Department’s $50,000 mapping project covered a swath a half-mile wide and five miles long, the X’s had to be huge, Rose said.
The strange markings were put in place about three weeks ago. Rose said he has not been accused of being involved in any “clandestine operation,” but the X’s have raised some eyebrows.
“People have been talking about them; everybody was wondering what they were,” Winters said.
If Saturday’s photography produced good pictures, Rose said, the plastic crosses will be peeled off. The painted ones will be left on the roads to fade away.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo