Two National Park Service memorials just a few miles apart in Pennsylvania. One commemorates the deaths of 2,209 people. The other only 40. Because one occurred in 1889 and the other in 2001, one barely stirred my emotions while the other brought tears to my eyes.
On May 31, 1889, the South Fork dam burst and the flood surge wiped out much of Johnstown doing about $534 million dollars in damage in today's money. Where I was: None of my grandparents had yet been born.
On September 11, 2001, Flight 93 crashed in a field after the passengers attempted to take control during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Where I was: I was getting ready for work in the bedroom of our first house. We watched the planes hit the towers and heard about the planes that crashed into the Pentagon and in a field.
The experience at these two NPS sites was markedly different. The Johnstown Flood site was established 80 years after the flood. The facilities are nice, but not outstanding. There's little visitation and little funding. The Flight 93 site was dedicated in 2011 and the visitor center was completed in 2015. The facilities are brilliantly designed, the displays are top-notch, and the whole site is clearly very well funded.
Perhaps more important than the facilities is that the Johnstown Flood site could just as easily be any other NPS site. The Flight 93 site has a reverent atmosphere. People talked in hushed tones and photography is not allowed in the visitor center. It feels sacred.
I started my visit at the Plaza Parking Area and followed the Wall of Names Trail past the crash site. A groundhog climbed over the wall into the field, but otherwise no one else ventured there. The field contains the remains of the people that died there. The Western Overlook Trail took me up the hill to the visitor center. The visitor center is glass and concrete. The walls bear the patterns of cedar because the crash burned a copse of cedar on the edge of the field. I spent an hour with the multimedia exhibits. The Allée Trail looped me back down to the parking area. Where it crossed a small creek on a bridge a deer watched me pass overhead.
Contrast this with the Johnstown Flood site. I started at the Lake View Visitor Center and looked at the exhibits briefly. It's unlikely they've been updated in the last 20 years. I walked to the edge of where the dam was and tried to imagine the water bursting through and rushing downstream in a wall 60 feet high. I couldn't. I spent about 20 minutes at the site.
What we consider special is that which we connect with. NPS usually does a great job of that, but Johnstown Flood was just too long ago to make the kind of impression the Flight 93 Memorial did. I wonder if I took my kids, still just a glimmer in 2001, to Shanksville if they would have the same reaction I did. Or if they would follow around with passing interest before we went somewhere else.
It's all very personal. I can't recommend the Flight 93 Memorial enough. And if you're there, you're so close to the Johnstown Flood Memorial you might as well go there, too.
📍On the lands of the Osage people.
