Remembering 9/11 – Shanksville, the site of Flight 93’s crash, gets a national makeover in time for the 10th anniversary of remembering its heroes.

SOMERSET COUNTY, Pa.—The pilgrimages here started soon after the attacks.

Local resident Donna Glessner remembers seeing visitors navigating Somerset County’s rural roads with maps spread out on their dashboards. Many ended up taking pictures of the wrong place.

The visitors bold enough to flag down a local always asked two questions: Where did the plane go down and how close can I get?

“It just felt wrong for us in the community not to be helpful,” Glessner said.

In January 2002, four months after the deadliest attacks in history on U.S. soil, a group of local volunteers started staffing the site of an abandoned coal strip mine where United Flight 93, the fourth airliner hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists on 9/11, crashed. The site had become the final resting place of 40 individuals from 11 states and three countries who decided to fight back.

For the last decade the crash site has consisted of a chain-link fence, Porta-Johns, and a makeshift museum housed in a nearby rusted metal shed with concrete floors. The building was last used as the command post for investigators in the weeks after Sept. 11.

Still people came—an average of 150,000 visitors annually—to this barely accessible spot in southwest Pennsylvania two miles from Shanksville and about 60 miles from Pittsburgh. To get here, visitors travel streets where American flags decorate the majority of houses.

These visitors have left behind so far about 40,000 tribute items: police badges, fireman’s hats, tiny flags with messages written on the white stripes, a purple heart, and even a brick from the seized Afghanistan compound of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. “Placed here in tribute to the first warriors of the Global War on Terror,” reads a note attached to the brick.

But now, in time for the 10th anniversary, this homemade shrine has received a National Park Service makeover. Officially opening on Sept. 10, the upgraded 2,220-acre Flight 93 National Memorial includes a two-mile processional drive to a landscaped field of honor. Soon this field will be ringed by 40 groves of trees (one for each victim).

Read more.