The Stars and Stripes is creating an interactive map with photos of veteran and war memorials throughout the United States:

Across the United States, towns have honored their soldiers and fallen soldiers in different ways – sometimes small or sometimes with large monuments. They are permanent markers in towns across the country that only locals know of but wandering tourists could easily miss.

We at Stars and Stripes want to document these memorials across the country, and to do so we created an interactive map. Unfortunately, Stars and Stripes can’t get to them all, so we are enlisting the help of our readers to supply us with images (and the exact location) of their local veteran memorials.

It’s an interesting and admirable effort. There are likely thousands of memorials in ‘small town USA’ that few people know about.

The effort may be two-edged, however. Given the criticisms that some war memorials have seen over just the past few years, the database may simultaneously become a source of contention as antagonists like the Freedom From Religion Foundation and Michael “Mikey” Weinstein use it to target small towns who cannot afford litigation to defend their memorials.

It will be interesting to see how it turns out.

You can see results so far on the map above or via the Stars and Stripes.

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