"Living Memorial" Grows at Flight 93 National Memorial

Volunteers and park staff pose with shovels and tree saplings.

NPS Photo

Written by John Bernstiel

This past weekend, beginning on Arbor Day and concluding on the last day of National Park Week, Flight 93 National Memorial conducted its 9^th annual Plant a Tree at Flight 93 reforestation event. National Park Service staff and the Friends of Flight 93 teamed up with professional foresters and reclamation specialists along with 447 volunteers to plant over 16,800 native Pennsylvania trees on an eight-acre plot of the memorial.

This yearly event was launched to heal a landscape scarred by its mining history and create a “living memorial” to honor and memorialize the 40 crew members and passengers of Flight 93. With an original goal set of 150,000 trees planted, to date, over 132,000 trees have been added to the memorial’s landscape. Among these are thousands of blight resistant American Chestnut seedlings, making Flight 93 NMEM the home of the largest population of these special trees in North America.

To make this yearly event possible, Flight 93 NMEM and the Friends of Flight 93 receive assistance from partners including Office of Surface Mining: Reclamation Enforcement, Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative, The American Chestnut Foundation, Green Forests Work, Allegheny National Forest, Pennsylvania Dept. of Conservation and Natural Recourses: Bureau of Forestry, Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection: Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Penn State Altoona, Tyrone Area High School, and 43 other organizations and corporations who provide trees, volunteers, and financial support.