HistoricSiteMarkers
Postwar & Contemporary

9/11 Memorial

Slippery Rock Township, Butler County, Pennsylvania

Marker Inscription

This monument is dedicated to all those who lost their lives as a result of the terrorist attacks against the U.S. on September 11, 2001.

The Story

On the morning of September 11, 2001, coordinated terrorist attacks struck the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon outside Washington, and a field in rural Pennsylvania, in the deadliest such assault ever carried out on American soil. In the years that followed, communities across the country — including small townships far from the crash sites — raised monuments like this one so that neighbors could gather, remember, and grieve together. For Pennsylvanians the day carried a particular closeness, as one of the hijacked airliners came down in the state's own countryside.

Why it matters

September 11 reshaped American life — its security, its politics, and its sense of itself — and local monuments like this keep that day's human cost from fading into abstraction, insisting that ordinary communities, not just the great cities, hold the memory.

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Related events

  • · September 11 attacks

Themes & tags

Civil RightsMemorial

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