Standing 208 feet above the marshes of the Matanzas River, the Great Cross at Mission Nombre de Dios is visible from miles away - a gleaming stainless steel structure that marks the spot where European civilization in what is now the United States began. On September 8, 1565, Admiral Pedro Menendez de Aviles landed at this site with a band of settlers and a fleet chaplain named Father Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales. Menendez kissed a wooden cross, proclaimed the land for Spain and the Church, and Father Lopez celebrated what historians recognize as the first parish Mass on North American soil - 56 years before the Pilgrims' Thanksgiving at Plymouth. The site was named Nombre de Dios: Name of God. The Great Cross was erected in 1965 to mark the 400th anniversary of that founding moment. Built at the direction of Archbishop Joseph P. Hurley, it consists of 200 stainless steel panels of various sizes, weighs approximately 70 tons, and is reinforced with concrete in its lower half to withstand Florida's storms. The base is covered with granite slabs, some bearing the names of donors. It is illuminated at night, visible from Matanzas Bay, from the Bridge of Lions, and from much of the northern historic district. The cross stands on the grounds of Mission Nombre de Dios, which also contains the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche - the oldest Marian shrine in the continental United States, established in the early 1600s when Spanish settlers began their devotion to the