Hundreds visit Flight 93 crash site

About 800 people made their way to the Flight 93 Memorial in southwestern Pennsylvania Monday, the day after the death of Osama bin Laden. The field near Shanksville is where the hijacked plane crashed, diverted from its ostensible national target by its passengers.

Visitors Monday saw a construction site, where work is under way to complete the first phase of a permanent memorial by the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

The visitors were quiet on Monday, but the backhoes and bulldozers didn’t stop. The first component of the $58 million monument is scheduled to open in four months.

Site superintendent Keith Newlin said the goal is a two-part ceremony on Sept. 10 and 11.

“We’ll have two ceremonies, then. On the 10th, we’ll have a ribbon cutting. On the 11th, we’ll have our typical memorial service,” he said.

The final monument will include a wind chime tower and groves of trees. The main feature of the first phase, opening this fall, will be a wall listing the names of the 40 passengers and crew who died when the plane crashed here.

The current temporary memorial is sparse. A shed hosts a display about the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath, and a chain link fence overlooks the crash site.