Search Markers

Palmyra Township, IL

On September 11, 2001, coordinated terrorist attacks struck the United States, and among the nearly 3,000 who died were hundreds of firefighters, police officers, and emergency medical workers who rushed toward the danger as others fled. This small-town Illinois monument, standing in rural Lee County, joins thousands of memorials that communities across America erected in the years afterward to honor those first responders. It reflects how a national tragedy was felt and mourned even in the quiet farm townships of the Midwest, far from New York, Washington, and Shanksville.

New York, NY

On the morning of September 11, 2001, coordinated terrorist attacks struck the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, the Pentagon, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people from many nations and walks of life. In New York City the loss fell especially hard on ordinary workers and on the firefighters, police, and rescue crews who rushed toward the burning towers. Neighborhoods across the five boroughs, including the Bronx, mourned their own — and small local dedications like this one grew out of that grief, keeping the memory of the fallen close to home.

Murrieta, CA

This memorial in Murrieta remembers the attacks of September 11, 2001, naming the three sites where the day's tragedy unfolded: New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people died that morning in the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil. Communities across the country, far from the impact sites, raised such markers to keep the pledge to 'remember.'

Sedona, AZ

This quiet memorial in Sedona keeps faith with a promise made across the nation after September 11, 2001: "we will never forget." On that morning, coordinated attacks struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and brought down a fourth plane in Pennsylvania, killing nearly three thousand people. In the years that followed, communities far from the attack sites raised their own markers so that neighbors could gather, remember, and reflect.

Slippery Rock Township, PA

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.

Kensington, MD

This memorial is built around a twisted length of steel recovered from the point of impact at the World Trade Center. It honors the 2,976 people killed on September 11, 2001, in the coordinated attacks on New York City, the Pentagon, and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Fragments of the towers like this one were distributed to communities across the country so that the day would be remembered close to home.

Ware, MA

On September 11, 2001, coordinated terrorist attacks brought down the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center and struck the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 people in the deadliest attack on American soil in modern times. In the years that followed, towns across the country — including this small New England mill community — raised memorials to mourn the dead and honor the firefighters and first responders who ran toward the danger. Many such memorials, as the name of this one suggests, are built around a length of steel salvaged from the fallen towers, turning a fragment of the ruins into a lasting place of reflection.

Jacksonville, NC

On the morning of September 11, 2001, the collapse of the World Trade Center's twin towers killed nearly 3,000 people, among them 343 New York City firefighters who had climbed into the burning buildings as others fled. In the years that followed, salvaged steel from the towers was carried across the country and set into memorials so that distant communities could hold a piece of that day. This beam found a fitting home in Jacksonville, the town at the gates of Camp Lejeune, where it was dedicated on July 4, 2003 and offered by New York's firefighters to the Marines who answered the wars that followed.

Vienna Township, OH

In the Cold War decades after World War II, Air Force Reserve units like the 910th trained constantly to keep America's airlift capability ready, moving troops and cargo on long missions far from home. The twin-boomed C-119 'Flying Boxcar' was a workhorse transport of that era, and even routine flights over open water carried real danger. On a December 1968 training mission bound for Puerto Rico, this aircrew was lost — a reminder that peacetime service can still demand the ultimate sacrifice.

Cumberland Township, PA

On the afternoon of July 2, 1863, the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the 99th Pennsylvania Infantry held this ground on the Union left, where the fighting swirled around Devil's Den and the rocky slopes below Little Round Top. As Confederate assaults threatened to turn the army's flank, regiments like the 99th fought desperately to keep the high ground in Federal hands. This granite monument, one of hundreds placed across the battlefield by veterans and their states, marks the line where these Pennsylvanians stood.

Cumberland Township, PA

Erected by a veterans' association and friends, this monument remembers the fallen of the 99th Pennsylvania Volunteers, who served in the Third Corps line during the fighting of July 2 and 3, 1863, at Gettysburg. The regiment was among the units drawn into the brutal combat on the army's left, where the second day's assaults tested the Union position to its limit. The dedication 'In memoriam our fallen comrades' reflects how survivors, years afterward, returned to consecrate the ground where friends had died.

San Antonio, TX

In the spring of 1867, the newly formed 9th Cavalry — Buffalo Soldiers, Black troopers under white officers — assembled at San Pedro Springs, pitching a "canvas city" that spread across several acres just north of the San Antonio Arsenal. From here the regiment deployed to the chain of West Texas forts, serving on the frontier with a discipline the local press grudgingly rated superior to white units. Their men would earn numerous Medals of Honor before the regiment's lineage carried forward into modern armored and airborne units.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument marks a position of the 9th Massachusetts Battery under Captain John Bigelow on July 2, 1863, during the Battle of Gettysburg. Ordered to slow the Confederate advance of Barksdale's Brigade, the battery famously fought "by prolonge" — dragging its guns rearward while continuing to fire, without infantry to protect it — before making a desperate final stand near the Trostle farm. It commemorates one of the most celebrated artillery actions of the entire battle.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument marks the first position of the 9th Massachusetts Battery, Captain John Bigelow's guns, along the Wheatfield Road late on July 2, 1863. From roughly 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. the battery held this ground during the Confederate assault on the Union left at Gettysburg before being forced to withdraw. It is one of several markers tracing Bigelow's fighting retreat across the battlefield.

Hearne, TX

The Methodists of Hearne organized their congregation in November 1870, in the raw years of Reconstruction, with the Rev. Horace Bishop as their first pastor. A church rose on this site in 1885 under the Rev. Seth Ward, who would later become the first native Texan elevated to bishop in the Methodist church. The present edifice was built in 1931 and renovated in 1965, and the congregation—renamed Grace United Methodist Church—marked a full century of Methodism in Hearne in 1970.

Frankfort, KY

On November 2, 1864, near Frankfort, four Confederate prisoners were shot in reprisal for the murder of Robert Graham, a Union supporter from Peaks Mill. All four were Kentuckians—Elijah Horton, Thomas Hunt, John Long, and Thornton Lafferty—drawn from counties across the state and, the marker notes, innocent of the crime. Their executions reflect the brutal cycle of retaliation that consumed Kentucky as guerrilla warfare tore at the divided commonwealth.

Augusta, KY

As a boy in May 1833, the future songwriter Stephen Collins Foster visited Augusta, where his uncle presided over Augusta College. Tradition holds that the harmonious voices drifting from a Black church on the hill left a lasting impression on the young Foster, who would later be remembered as America's first great popular songwriter. The marker suggests these sounds shaped songs he composed in later years.

Brownfield, TX

In 1903, landowners platted Gomez in the center of then-unorganized Terry County, secured a post office named for Cuban independence patriot Máximo Gómez, dug a public well, and lured settlers and merchants. It was the county's first inhabited townsite and hoped to become the county seat—an honor that went instead to nearby Brownfield in 1904. The post office closed in 1926 and the school in 1941, leaving a church, a few businesses, and the old cemetery to carry the name.

Reagan, TX

Kentucky-born W. F. Williams met Sam Houston in Tennessee and joined his army, fighting for Texas independence at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. He later settled in Falls County in 1857, farming, ranching, and partnering in a general store. He raised ten children and lived until 1878.

Clarksville, TX

William Becknell of Missouri is remembered as the "Father of the Santa Fe Trail," opening that trade route from the United States into Spanish territory in 1821. In 1835 he settled with his family on Becknell's Prairie in present-day Red River County, where—according to tradition—David Crockett visited them on his way to the Alamo, and Becknell himself fought in the 1836 Texas War for Independence. The earliest part of this house dates to his family's settlement, later enlarged, relocated, and restored in 1968.

Archer City, TX

The notorious Missouri outlaw Jesse James found a haven in Archer City at a house built for Allen H. Parmer, his Confederate war comrade and brother-in-law who managed the Stone Land and Cattle Company. When hunted for train and bank robberies, Jesse and his brother Frank would lie low at the Parmer home. Jesse was killed in 1882, but Frank kept visiting, while Parmer himself raised a family of respected citizens.

Greenup, KY

In the autumn of 1862, Union Brigadier General George W. Morgan led 8,000 men on a grueling sixteen-day, 200-mile retreat from Cumberland Gap to the Ohio River, reaching Greenup on October 3. Confederate operations based at Barbourville had cut his supply lines, forcing the withdrawal even though his troops had held the Gap itself. Harassed all the way by John Hunt Morgan's raiders, the retreat to Camp Dennison in Ohio was hailed as a feat of endurance and command.

Beattyville, KY

After occupying strategic Cumberland Gap from June to September 1862, Union General George W. Morgan found himself cut off from supplies and forced into a daring 200-mile retreat. Searching for provisions, his 9,000-man command passed this way, finding a flour mill the Confederates had burned the night before. Harassed the whole way by Confederate raiders, Morgan brought his army safely to the Ohio River at Greenup in just sixteen days.

Belton, TX

This memorial recalls what the Civil War did to Texas schooling. Baylor University — including the 'Female Department' that became Mary Hardin-Baylor — had run at Independence for fifteen years when war came in 1861, and it suffered along with education statewide: state school funds stopped, many of the 1860's 2,416 college students marched off as soldiers, and numerous of Texas's 25 colleges closed. In the classrooms that remained, the old, the disabled, and women taught children who wrote on slates or in smoothed sand for want of paper.

Santa Clara County, CA

Before Milpitas was a suburb ringed by highways, it was open ranch and farm country worked by pioneer families who cleared, tilled, and grazed the Santa Clara Valley soil. The Laguna Cemetery holds those early settlers, the men and women whose labor turned frontier land into productive farmland. This memorial honors them as the community's founding generation, resting in the ground they worked.

Savannah, GA

This memorial stands in Savannah, the coastal Georgia city that sent thousands of its sons to fight in World War II, a conflict that pulled ordinary Chatham County men into battlefields across Europe, the Pacific, and North Africa between 1941 and 1945. Titled "A World Apart," it honors those who never came home — the local cost of a global war fought to halt fascist aggression and defend the freedom of the United States. Coastal Georgia itself was on a wartime footing in these years, with nearby shipyards, airfields, and the ever-present threat of enemy submarines just offshore.

Granger, TX

Designed by architect William Flick and built in the early 1920s, this craftsman-and-prairie-style bungalow was home to A. A. Spacek, a Granger grocer, banker, and merchant who also served as the town's postmaster and mayor. Well connected in Texas politics, he was tied to Governor Dan Moody and befriended a young Lyndon B. Johnson, who nicknamed him "Double A." The low-gabled house reflects the popular architectural tastes of its day.

Alvarado, TX

Around 1877 Alanson Asbury Head and his wife Susanna—known affectionately as Uncle Ben and Aunt Sukie—built a two-story home here and terraced some 300 acres into orchards, vineyards, and berry patches. As their farm prospered they gave two acres in 1903 for the Head Chapel Methodist Church and two more in 1908 for the Bethany Rest Cemetery, where they were later buried side by side.

Graham, TX

A. B. Medlan settled this Young County farm in 1855 and built his home from brick made on the land itself. A Texas Ranger as well as a church leader and builder, he also served the young county as treasurer and commissioner. The house was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1964.

Beeville, TX

This early-twentieth-century Baroque-style home was built in 1906 by Jane Field Jones, a philanthropist who founded a local school and teacherage and was the widow of Captain A.C. Jones, remembered as the "Father of Beeville." With its eight fireplaces, hardwood floors, and large formal rooms, the house long served as a gathering place for Texas leaders, including governors, and has remained in the family's hands.

Kerrville, TX

Kerrville's Schreiner family shaped the Hill Country as ranchers and merchants, and this house began in 1897 as a wedding gift from Charles A. Schreiner to his son. It later passed to a grandson and was expanded in 1927 with a second story, arched porch, and tile roof by noted San Antonio architect Alfred Giles in a Spanish-influenced style. The home stands as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark and a monument to one family's regional influence.

Crockett, TX

Built in 1835 on a large land grant from Mexico, the Gossett home followed the classic southern plan with a separate kitchen out back. Its most storied moment came early in 1836, when former Tennessee neighbor Colonel David Crockett camped with his company by the nearby spring for a night on his way to the Alamo. Owner A. E. Gossett had come, like Crockett, from the American South to the Texas frontier on the eve of revolution.

Alto, TX

Circuit-riding preachers reached this community by 1845, and the Rev. Andrew Cummings formally organized the congregation in 1852 as part of the new Rusk circuit. Meeting first in a schoolhouse and worshiping in a succession of buildings donated and designed by local families, the church grew into a full-time station and in 1960 took the name of Bishop A. Frank Smith, who began his ministry here.

Dallas, TX

The A.H. Belo Corporation grew from a small firm that launched the Galveston Daily News in 1842, when Texas was still a republic, and began issuing the invaluable Texas Almanac in 1857. Alfred Horatio Belo bought the company in 1876 and in 1885 founded the Dallas Morning News, entrusting it to the young G.B. Dealey, who would become a legend of Texas journalism. The firm moved to Dallas in 1923 and later expanded into radio and television, including WFAA.

Slidell, TX

In the 1850s A. H. 'Sevier' Fortenberry brought his family from Arkansas into what was then raw Texas wilderness, farming and raising stock while joining his neighbors to fend off raids on the scattered settlements. On October 30, 1868, he was intercepted and killed by Indians as he rode to join a defensive posse, and was laid to rest in Denton County's Pollard Cemetery. He is remembered as likely the last person killed in the Indian conflicts of this vicinity.

T1 R6 WELS, ME

This overlook honors A. J. 'Allie' Cole, remembered as a pioneer of transportation in the Maine north woods. In 1917 he launched horse-drawn mail, freight, and passenger service between Enfield and Burlington, and by the 1920s he was hauling freight in motor trucks as far north as Houlton. His career traces the everyday revolution that carried rural Maine from the horse to the internal-combustion engine.

Round Rock, TX

Swedish immigrant Anders Johan Anderson built this Folk Victorian house in 1908–09, moving in from his nearby farm with two daughters after his first wife's death; he later married Carolina Lindquist, and the family kept the home until 1963. Its fishscale shingles and classical columns reflect the prosperity of Round Rock at a time when the town was a mercantile hub for the area's Swedish community.

Waco, TX

In 1875 Professor A. J. Moore of Paul Quinn College, troubled by the lack of quality schooling for Waco's Black children, began teaching small groups in his home. The effort grew into Waco's first school for Black youth, moving from a repurposed frame hospital building into a brick schoolhouse in 1923 and taking Moore's name. Over nearly a century it graduated more than 4,000 students before closing in 1971, sending alumni into medicine, law, education, and countless other fields.

O'Donnell, TX

Farmer-rancher A. J. Warren helped organize Lynn County in 1903 and, in 1925, built this two-story brick-and-concrete building to house the newly chartered First National Bank. Competition drove a merger and the bank's closure within a year, after which the building served a succession of stores and offices until the city acquired it and opened the O'Donnell Museum here in 1974.

Edgewood, TX

Adolphus Lane Spradlin came to Texas from Indiana as a boy in 1875 and, in 1898, built this dogtrot cabin of hand-hewn logs on land in the Van Zandt County community of Small. He and his wife Lee Ann, of Cherokee ancestry, farmed there until 1909, when he sold out and moved to Edgewood to run a cotton gin and serve 22 years as justice of the peace. The Sims, Vines, and Simmons families later called the cabin home.

Houston, TX

New Orleans native Albert M. Armand, a clerk for a Houston plumbing-supply firm, bought this Avondale lot in 1911 and built a two-story Arts and Crafts home with a wraparound porch and full-height wood columns. He lived here only two years before selling, and the house passed through a string of early owners. Its knee-bracketed eaves and gabled entry portico still mark the character of a growing streetcar-era neighborhood.

Brownfield, TX

A. M. Brownfield arrived in newly settled Terry County as a rancher in 1900 and helped anchor the community that took his family's name, organizing the Brownfield State Bank in 1905. In 1928 he built this Spanish Colonial–style residence of concrete and clay, deliberately fireproofed after an earlier family home burned in 1915. The house was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1985.

Jefferson, TX

This early-twentieth-century cottage was built for Angus Mezappa Urquhart, grandson of Allen Urquhart, one of the founders of the river town of Jefferson. Its Eastlake styling shows in the wraparound porch with turned balustrade and spindle frieze and the jig-cut bargeboards, hallmarks of the ornamental Victorian woodwork popular in the period. The house was later designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.

Stroudsburg, PA · est. 2007

A. Mitchell Palmer built his career in Stroudsburg, where he practiced law before serving in Congress and, from 1919 to 1921, as U.S. Attorney General. His name became fixed to the "Palmer Raids," the sweeping arrests of suspected radicals, anarchists, and immigrants during the postwar "Red Scare" that gripped the nation after World War I. A 1920 contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, Palmer embodied both the anxieties and the civil-liberties controversies of his era.

Marshville, NC

Albert Ray Newsome (1894–1951) was a North Carolina educator, author, and editor who served as secretary of the state's Historical Commission from 1926 to 1935. In that role he helped organize and preserve the documentary record of North Carolina's past, professionalizing the work of state history. This marker stands near his birthplace in Marshville.

Georgetown, TX

Built in 1912 for lumber executive Alexander W. Sillure and his wife Eva, this house showcased the very product its owner sold. As general manager and vice president of the Belford Lumber Company, Sillure supervised his own home's construction and drafted plans for many other Georgetown residences. Its full-width porch and broad eaves reflect the American Foursquare and Prairie School styles popular in early twentieth-century America.

Galveston, TX

Built in 1895 for lumber magnate A. Wilkins Miller, this Victorian cottage reflects the Gilded Age fortunes made in Texas timber. As president of one of the state's largest lumber companies, Miller drove the growth of the southeast Texas timber industry and the rail lines that carried its product. The home's sawn brackets, stained glass, and bay windows mark the era's decorative taste.

San Benito, TX

When Albanus Clemens Purvis came from Ohio to the Rio Grande Valley seeking better health, San Benito was little more than a town on paper with no Anglo-American residents. He became its first justice of the peace, sold real estate, and farmed, while his daughters taught the town's first school in 1907 and served as an early postmaster. In 1911 the former mill owner built this house, which has remained in his family's hands ever since.

Dallas, TX

Alfred Horatio Belo, a North Carolina–born Confederate colonel, came to Texas after the Civil War and rose through the Galveston News to build a publishing empire, launching the Dallas Morning News in 1885. Seeking a home worthy of their standing, the Belos settled on Ross Avenue, Dallas's most fashionable street, and by the 1890s raised this Classical Revival residence echoing the family's North Carolina roots. The family lived here until 1922, after which the house served for decades as a funeral home.

Garland, TX

The Bankhead Highway—America's second transcontinental east-west route, born of the 1916 Federal Aid Road Act—ran through Garland and fueled a boom of roadside businesses. A.J. Head opened this filling station in 1947, and over the years it housed a tire shop, auto repair, welding, a bail bond office, and a discount store to serve highway travelers. Designed by Robert Otis Lagrone in the Streamline Moderne style, its curved brick wall and metal canopy captured the sleek, horizontal look popular in the 1930s and 1940s.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1991

Beginning in 1836, the A.M.E. Book Concern operated here as a publishing arm of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, printing hymnals, religious materials, and the work of Black authors at a time when few outlets would. In 1847 it launched The Christian Recorder, one of the oldest continuously published African American periodicals. Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner led the firm as editor until 1884.

Scott County, VA

In the hills of southwest Virginia, A.P. Carter opened his grocery store in 1945, in the same community that gave the world the Carter Family, pioneers of recorded country music. Decades later his daughter Janette kept the flame alive, launching the Old Time Music Show in 1974 and helping open the Carter Family Memorial Museum in 1977. Together these sites turned a quiet Appalachian crossroads into a shrine of American roots music.

Leander, TX

About 1866, in the years just after the Civil War, farmer and veteran Alpheus S. Mason raised this double-galleried home along Bagdad Road, a military and commercial artery threading through central Texas. Mason threw himself into the life of the region—church, business, Masonic lodge, and politics—helping the town of Bagdad grow before it faded into a ghost town and nearby Leander rose in its place. The Victorian-trimmed porch still speaks of a prosperous frontier farmer putting down roots on a well-traveled road.

Amarillo, TX

When locomotive No. 5000 entered Santa Fe service in December 1930, the railroad had long since stopped naming engines for people—but an early engineer nicknamed it "Madam Queen" after a character on the radio hit "Amos and Andy," and it stuck. Built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works as a powerful pilot model, the great steam engine ran more than 1.75 million miles before diesels made it obsolete. Retired in 1953, the "Queen" was presented to the City of Amarillo in 1957.

College Station, TX

When Texas chartered an independent district around the A&M College campus in 1909, there were too few students to fill a school — so college leaders persuaded three neighboring districts to send their children to a new campus school that opened in 1920 with 304 pupils. Bankrolled by the college with buildings, salaries, and equipment, it became a model rural school before overcrowding forced its move off campus in 1940, giving rise to the College Station school district.

Houston County, TX

Born in Kentucky in 1814, Aaron Lowery lived in Tennessee and Louisiana before entering Texas in 1835, where he promptly joined the Texian Army — enlisting in Capt. George English's company at the same time as Sam Houston. He saw action in the Battle of Bexar during the Texas Revolution. He later married Louisa English, moved to Trinity County around 1851, and raised ten children.

Sherman, TX

Aaron Mangum came to Texas from South Carolina with a Georgia battalion in 1835 and served under Colonel James Fannin at Goliad during the Texas Revolution. Falling ill on an expeditionary mission, he was away from the garrison and so survived the massacre of Fannin's men in 1836. He later married Leonora Snively and settled in Grayson County; the town of Mangum, Oklahoma, carries his name.

Doylestown, PA · est. 2004

In the years around World War II, photographer Aaron Siskind wandered the barns, walls, and weathered facades of Bucks County with his camera. What began as documentary record-keeping gradually dissolved into something new: close, abstract studies of surface and form that treated a peeling wall like a canvas. That shift, worked out here in rural Pennsylvania between 1939 and 1945, helped push American photography toward fine art.

Abbott, TX

In 1881 the Missouri, Kansas & Texas (Katy) Railroad laid a line through a new Hill County town named for Joseph Abbott, a local lawyer and U.S. congressman. Merchant Winston Treadwell soon opened a general store, and within a decade Abbott boasted a school, a post office, several businesses, and three churches. Devastating fires near the turn of the century failed to break the town, whose residents simply rebuilt.

Abbott, TX

Founded in 1876 as the Liberty Grove Baptist Church by thirteen members meeting in a country schoolhouse, this congregation renamed itself for the town of Abbott and moved there in the 1880s. For its first years the flock worshipped in the local Methodist church until it raised its own sanctuary in 1892. Growing steadily, it expanded its buildings and sustained active outreach and missionary work for well over a century.