Ride with the Forty

The Memorial Today

The Flight 93 Temporary Memorial

Visitors began coming to the site almost immediately after the crash, and five years later the site attracts more than 130,000 people annually. Visitors come from every state and numerous countries around the world to see the temporary memorial. When visitors arrive, they are overcome with emotion; the rolling hills and serene landscape make it nearly impossible to imagine that such a horrible tragedy came to pass in this peaceful place.

The temporary memorial, overlooking the crash site, is a 40-foot-long section of fence adorned with flowers, handwritten messages, artwork, and flags of all sizes from around the world. Visitors leave behind tokens of their appreciation and respect, including baseball hats, T-shirts, religious symbols, artwork, jewelry, and personal photographs. Many record their thoughts in bound books at the site or write on blank cards that they leave in a weatherproof box. Some simply write their message on the guard rail in the parking lot. Visitors are so moved by this place that they feel inspired to leave a piece of themselves behind to pay their respects.

The Flight 93 Tributes and Archives

These tributes, along with other objects collected from the temporary site, are the property of the Flight 93 National Memorial and are under the dedicated care of the National Park Service. The items collected over the years have been stored employing recognized museum conservation techniques for the preservation of objects for future exhibition, study and other educational purposes. The collection currently contains more than 20,000 objects and is growing daily. In addition to these materials, the archives will contain oral histories that tell the story of that day in the words of family members of the passengers and crew, first responders, and community members who heard the plane roar overhead. The oral histories will also reveal how these people came together to create the Flight 93 National Memorial and will share the creative thinking of those who entered the design competition.

The Ambassadors

Shanksville and the surrounding Stonycreek Township is home to the Ambassadors, a group of 43 individuals whose lives also changed forever on September 11. These devoted citizens volunteer their time seven days a week, 365 days a year, to serve as greeters at the Temporary Memorial, making sure that personal welcomes are offered and questions are answered. Their sustained record of service is a remarkable tribute to the heroism and sacrifice of the passengers and crew of Flight 93.

The New Flight 93 National Memorial

A Glimpse at the Design of the New Memorial

The Field of Honor

The Field of Honor is a large, bowl-shaped existing landform roughly circular, that forms the heart of the memorial and park. Visitors will experience varied landscape and memorial features along the edge of and within the Field of Honor. In framing the open space of the Field of Honor with a distinct, formal edge, the memorial design expresses the spirit of the Mission Statement preamble: A common field one day. A field of honor forever.

It is the convergence of the land's beauty and power with the strength and sacrifice of heroic, personal action on September 11 that give the memorial site its unique sanctity. The memorial design expresses this confluence by marking the Flight Path as it breaks the circular continuity of the Field of Honor edge at the Entry Portal and the Sacred Ground, where the crash occurred. The edge of the Field of Honor features five main areas of the memorial experience.

Tower of Voices

At the entrance to the national memorial, rising 93 feet into the sky, will be the Tower of Voices, containing 40 large wind chimes, evocative of, and a tribute to, the sound of the wind and voices aboard the plane during it's final moments.

Entry Portal

The main entrance to the Field of Honor occurs at its northwestern edge. The Entry Portal is approached through a clearing of trees on a black slate plaza marking the Flight Path. High, textured concrete walls frame the sky where Flight 93 descended to the crash site. The walkway leads visitors through the first wall into a plaza featuring Red Maple trees and through a second portal to give visitors their first look at the expanse of the Field of Honor and the crash site below. From the plaza, visitors can enter the visitor center, the interpretive and educational hub of the park. A ramp rises past the visitor center to a tree-lined walkway that curves around the edge of the Field of Honor.

40 Memorial Groves

The memorial design commemorates the collective act of courage by the 40 passengers and crew of Flight 93 through 40 Memorial Groves of Red and Sugar Maple trees in a shared, curving embrace of the Field of Honor's open space as it descends to the Sacred Ground. A Red Maple allee formally defines the curving edge and monumental size of the Field of Honor. These maples naturally occur locally throughout the woodlands of the Laurel Highlands. They turn color in autumn and are bare-branched or green-leafed during the rest of the year. Pedestrian trails meander through the groves, crossing the allee on concrete radials that step down into the Field of Honor; eventually leading to the Sacred Ground.

Ponds

The ponds will serve as a "natural" threshold of experience as the visitor approaches the Sacred Ground. The area will be its own kind of healing landscape, as it will be a habitat full of life. The ponds provide a unique moment within the Field of Honor experience in being simultaneously embraced by the curving maple allee, while reconnecting to the larger natural systems beyond and outside it. Here visitors will be most aware of continuously connected living systems as the circular path literally bridges the hydrology of the Field of Honor.

Sacred Ground

As the final resting place for the passengers and crew of Flight 93, the Sacred Ground is the focus of the Field of Honor. Here is where the plane crashed and a grove of hemlock trees absorbed the impact and inferno. The public can closely view the crash site from a plaza along its edge, which breaks the continuity of the circular Field of Honor.

Western Overlook

The Western Overlook, located at the western edge of the Field of Honor, is where the FBI set up its command post for their investigation after the crash and the families were first brought to overlook the crash site. The foundations and floor slabs of buildings there will remain to evoke the memory of the structures. A meandering path will allow visitors to access this area. Two of the building footprints are among planned trees and one will be within the Field of Honor clearing; marking the location where the families first viewed the crash site below.

September, 2009