Hitting the trails: Spring in air at Flight 93 as rangers, workers prepare for crowds

Mar. 25—SHANKSVILLE — With trees budding and meadow birds returning, maintenance crews and park rangers at Flight 93 National Memorial are preparing for an increase in visitors as warmer weather moves into the region.

In addition to marking the site near Shanksville where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001, and memorializing the 40 passengers and crew that fought the plane's hijackers, the 2,200-acre national memorial has roughly three miles of hiking trails and serves as a natural area with wetlands and reforested spaces.

"I definitely invite people to take the trails," ranger and public information officer Katherine Hostetler said. "It's a great place to take in the day."

Flight 93 National Memorial's crushed limestone paths include the Allee, the Western Overlook and the Trail of Remembrance — each spanning about a mile.

All three trails provide different views, from an overall scope of the landscape on the Allee trail, to a view of the memorial's Wall of Names on the Trail of Remembrance, to the original memorial at the Western Overlook where families of the victims were brought in the days following the terrorist attack.

Hostetler said each path is a good place to reflect on the events of that day 22 years ago. The trails "get a lot of use during field trip season," which is roughly from April through the beginning of June, she said.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic put a halt to those activities for a time, the site experienced an increase in younger visitors last year, and the staff expects this year's number of school trips to be on par with pre-pandemic numbers.

Typically, Flight 93 National Memorial gets close to 400,000 visitors a year.

That's roughly half of the total number of visitors to western Pennsylvania's five National Park Service sites — Flight 93 National Memorial, Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site, Johnstown Flood National Memorial, Fort Necessity National Battlefield in Fayette County, and Friendship Hill National Historic Site in Fayette County — which had a total of nearly 1 million visitors in the past year.

"The numbers reflect the connection people have to national parks," Stephen M. Clark, superintendent of western Pennsylvania's National Park Service sites, said in a release. "These five parks provide a special place to learn, recreate, relax and spend time with friends and family throughout the entire year."

To prepare for all those guests, maintenance crews work hard to keep the grounds in check.

Rodger Brewer, Flight 93 National Memorial work leader, said a lot of his group's work in the spring includes removing winter gear from their equipment, such as plows and salt boxes from vehicles.

The crew of four full-time workers also addresses any uneven or washed-out trails from the winter. They use a roller on a skid-steer to flatten the paths. The trails are also raked if needed, and fill material is used to pack in spots that need it. From then on, workers ride the paths once a week to make sure they are in good shape.

Across all of the free western Pennsylvania parks, there are roughly 32 miles of hiking trails.

What Brewer looks forward to most with the warmer weather is getting his seasonal workers back.

"I can't wait to get our seasonals back in," he said. "They help us out a lot."

The work crew staff is usually bolstered by three when those employees return.

Then, the group works on the regular maintenance of the grounds. That ranges from mowing every day, weed-pulling come April, weed-whacking around the numerous trees, cleaning up sticks and downed tree limbs and cutting back any invasive plants. Brewer and Hostetler noted that they've recently had a hard time dealing with autumn olive, and a crew was brought in to burn it away.

Other attractions at the memorial include birding and wildlife spotting. Hostetler said the site often gets avid birders in the morning who visit to spot some of the meadow fowl and other species, such as the ducks, geese and short-eared owls that frequent the area.

There's also a healthy population of deer, porcupine and sometimes animals such as bears and coyotes.

Flight 93 is open sunrise to sunset year-round.

For more information, visit www.nps.gov/flni/index.htm.