Juli Alsadi HiDesert | Star | Posted: Friday, March 18, 2016 7:31 pm
Foundation works to heal Desert Christ Park
After park lines were redrawn, this enormous sculpture was moved from the hillside behind the amphitheater to its current location.
More than 60 years after Antone Martin’s Jesus statue first raised its arms on a hill overlooking Yucca Valley, a nonprofit group is hoping to restore Martin’s park of sculptures and bring it back into the public eye. Martin created the 10-foot-tall, three-ton cement statue of Jesus Christ at his home in Inglewood in hopes of displaying it on the rim of the Grand Canyon. That dream was quickly dashed by the parks service, but Martin came to know a Yucca Valley man then called the Desert Parson, Eddie Garver. Garver owned property and had a vision for the sculpture, which the two men transported to the HiDesert and dedicated at a sunrise service on Easter Sunday 1951. Martin moved to the area and lived in a trailer on location while he created more than 40 snow white statues and images portraying Christ’s life and teachings. The park was once maintained by the county, but an ACLU lawsuit settled in 1992 ended public funding, just prior to the 7.3 Landers earthquake, which caused a great deal of damage. In 1996 the nonprofit Desert Christ Park Foundation was formed and cleaned up the site with a crew of volunteers, including youth groups from the neighboring Evangelical Free Church. The foundation operates with a budget of about $4,000 per year, which has proven to be inadequate to compete against weather and vandals, and many of the statues are crumbling. …read FULL ARTICLE