The Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, PA

While driving into Somerset, we saw a road directional sign to "Flight 93 Memorial."   We checked our map and Shanksville was about 10 miles away; we had to go there.  Everyone will remember the awful day of 9/11 in 2001 when the 4 commercial jets were hijacked in flight from Newark by terrorists with 2 planes smashing into and destroying the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and a third plane crashing into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The 4th plane, United Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco was hijacked after 46 minutes flight and turned around heading for the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., only 18 flying minutes away from the crash site.

Just before 10AM, the United jet is seen flying low and erratically over southwest Pennsylvania.  It crashed at 10:03 AM, upside down, at 563 miles per hour into a Somerset County agricultural field.  There were no survivors; 33 passengers, 7 crew and the 4 hijackers were killed.  After the plane was hijacked, 13 passengers placed 37 phone calls to family, friends and authorities discovering the horrible end of the first 3 flights and realizing that their plane was also going to attack an important American target.  The passengers and crew voted to try to stop the hijackers and retake control of the plane.  When the flight data recorder was located, it had clear evidence of shouts, crashes, thumps, breaking glass and plates, leading to the 9/11 Commission conclusion that the unarmed passengers and crew were seconds away from heroically overcoming the hijackers.  At that point the hijackers could be heard yelling--take it down!-- and crashing the plane into the ground.

The Flight 93 Memorial is still under construction with completion expected by 2016.  There is a temporary Visitor Shelter, a Flight Path walk and the Wall of Names, 40 concrete tablets with the names of each of the victims. A large boulder marks the impact site which was filled in after the investigation was completed.  A Memorial Grove of trees and the Visitor Center are in progress as is the entire Memorial Plaza. A Tower of Voices with 40 wind chimes is under construction near the entrance.  The Memorial Park celebrates the 40 heroes that thwarted the hijackers, sacrificing their own lives.  It's a very large Memorial and currently very somber due in large part to the nature of the event that occurred here.