This land was first settled in the late 1700s and for a century and a half much of the area remained wooded, with cultivated fields and pastures around a few scattered farmhouses and barns. Beginning in the 1950s, mining reshaped the landscape as huge machines stripped away soil and rock to expose coal seams, and enormous trucks carried coal along this road to steel mills and power plants, bringing people and jobs. In the mid-1990s, surface mining ended, and although unused equipment and industrial buildings littered the area, the rocky land began to be reclaimed with grasses and small trees planted, mine water treated, and wildlife returning. On September 11, 2001, the land was transformed again when, because of the struggle of the passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93 with terrorists, the airplane crashed two miles ahead rather than at the intended target in Washington, D.C. At the crash site, a memorial and verdant trees, grasses, and wildflowers now embrace the land, and millions of people from around the world come to pay their respects.
