All work completed by NBWLA and Paul Murdoch Architects

This 2,200 acre National Park Service memorial commemorates the site of the Flight 93 crash in central Pennsylvania. The centerpiece of the Memorial is the bowl-like Field of Honor which is embraced by forty groves of red maples, one each life lost in the Flight 93 crash. A circular walkway around the Bowl brings visitors to an overlook of the Sacred Ground where the plane came to rest, planted in a blooming native meadow.

Given the site is atop a former strip mine, the entire design was imagined as a place of healing from both the scars of environmental damage and an unimaginable terrorist act. The site’s soils, heavily damaged by strip mining, required careful design in order to support the meadow and grove plantings that define the memorial landscape. Innovative soil building strategies were implemented to create conditions for the flourishing of native plantings.

Paul Josey, while working at NBWLA, was responsible for developing innovative reclamation soils profiles and specifications, and for construction documentation and administration. He collaborated on all planting designs within the Memorial Groves and along the Entry Road carried out in Phase 1A. For high-visibility areas around the Memorial Groves and Visitor Center, he collaborated on soil design with Dr. James Burger of Virginia Tech.