Today is the anniversary of 9/11, so I thought it would be a good time to share this.
As some readers may know, I took a vacation at the end of August. During my week off, I traveled to Pennsylvania to visit the Flight 93 Memorial site in Shanksville. It is a trip I have wanted to take for years.
Flight 93 was the plane best known for the passenger revolt and the famous line of “Let’s roll.” The passengers used the plane’s meal cart as a battering ram to get into the cockpit in order to fight the hijackers. Ultimately, the plane crashed into a grassy field, killing everyone on board.
I decided to stay at a hotel in Harrisburg, the state’s capital city. I had never been to Harrisburg before but enjoyed seeing it. It’s an interesting city with lots of restaurants and nightlife, but that’s not really why I was there. It took me about six and a half hours to drive down from Massachusetts and I checked into my hotel at around 7 pm.
On Tuesday, I got up and drove to the memorial. It was another two and a half hour drive west from Harrisburg. You can see my route in this map. One of things I found interesting about the drive through central PA is that it truly is Trump country. It’s a sea of corn fields and huge Trump billboards. I also forgot how mountainous Pennsylvania is in the west. When you reach the Blue Mountains, you literally drive through them in tunnels that are at the base of multiple mountains.
The site is really in the middle of nowhere. When you finally get off the highway in Shanksville, there are gas stations and a few other businesses, but as you follow the signs for the memorial out of town, you quickly find yourself in extremely rural surroundings.
When you arrive at the entrance to the memorial site, you turn off the main road and the first sign you see is one telling you that it’s another mile to the memorial. The grounds of the site are massive. Once you reach the main parking lot, you walk a short distance and you see this walkway.
What I later learned is that this walkway mirrors the path of the plane as it came in for its crash landing, upside down and at a 45 degree angle.
When you reach the end of the walkway, you’re on a balcony, looking out over the impact site. A sign on the balcony says “A common field one day. A field of honor forever.”
Though it’s difficult to see from the photo, there is a boulder which has been placed at the exact impact site, which is closely guarded. The only people allowed to visit the impact site are members of the victims’ families. Not even staff are allowed to visit the impact site without permission from the families.
This photo gives you an idea of the immense size of the memorial campus.
I then walked back up the walkway and went into the visitor center where I spoke with a park ranger for a few minutes. He told me some things about the crash that I didn’t know. According to him, crews were able to obtain and identify the remains of every passenger on the plane. Also, these fields were the site of a mine for many years, making the ground somewhat porous. Because of this, when the plane impacted it not only exploded from the jet fuel. The wreckage bored right into the ground, burying what was left of the plane many feet into the ground.
The visitor center is full of various displays that take you through the timeline of the day. High tech graphics show the flight path as the plane took off, when the terrorists took control, and when the passengers fought back. At the time of impact, the plane was only about 20 minutes of flight time from Washington, DC. It is believed this plane was destined for the Capitol Building.
I went back to my car after this and drove down to the area near the crash site. This photo was taken looking back up the hill towards the balcony way up in the distance. This also gives you a sense of the size of the place.
You can learn more about the memorial here.
If you have ever considered visiting, I would recommend it. The place gives you a much deeper understanding of what happened that day and the sacrifice of the 40 passengers and crew members who died preventing this plane from reaching its intended target.
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