Easter dawn at Mt. Davidson cross

Before dawn on Easter Sunday, as they have for the past 90 years, worshipers and observers climbed to the top of San Francisco’s Mt. Davidson to take in dawn’s crest.

Sunrise service at Mt. Davidson is a San Francisco tradition older than most San Franciscans. A couple of hundred people made the short hike up to the huge cross to carry on that tradition on a brisk, clear and dry Sunday morning with a brilliant fiery sunrise.

A multi-denominational array of clergy and civic leaders led a ceremony that dates back to just after World War I. In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the 103-foot-tall cross. At its peak during World War II, the sunrise service drew more than 50,000 worshipers.