On October 25, 2002, twelve days before Election Day, a plane carrying United States Senator Paul Wellstone crashed near this site en route to the Eveleth airport, killing Wellstone, his wife Sheila Wellstone, their daughter Marcia Wellstone Markuson, three campaign staff members—Tom Lapic, Mary McEvoy, and Will McLaughlin—and the plane's pilots, Michael Guess and Richard Conry. Wellstone served Minnesota in the U.S. Senate for twelve years and was a teacher and activist for more than thirty. A populist Democrat, he paired forceful advocacy for social and economic justice with humor and joy for politics, stirred crowds as a fiery orator, and formed alliances across the political spectrum as a legislator. He loved Minnesota, especially the Iron Range, where he began his first Senate campaign in 1989 and which he often called his second home because its progressive politics and working-class character suited him well. The six-acre memorial site honors Wellstone's life and career and the lives of his family and staff who died in the crash; it includes the Legacy Trail, the Commemorative Circle, and the Crash Site Narrative Space, preserves the land largely undisturbed, uses rock more than two billion years old that was mined by steelworkers at the old Erie Taconite mine nearby, and was made possible through land donated by St. Louis County and work by designer Phil Rickey, St. Paul Landscape Architects, Sanders Wacker Bergly, Inc., Terra Ferma Development in Iron, Minnesota, LeAnn Littlewolf of Duluth, and hundreds of donors to the Wellstone Action Fund.