SHANKSVILLE, Pa. — The scene couldn't be more different than it was 20 years ago, crowds of people visiting what is now a national memorial to Flight 93.
Visitors walked along what now signifies the flight path that plane took before crashing.
For this anniversary, artists lined that walk with chalk images of the 40 passengers and crew who lost their lives here.
A sign overlooking the crash site reads, "A common field one day, a field of honor forever."
Because that's what this was a rural field just like so many we all know throughout Pennsylvania, except this one became part of the September 11 story.
"My wife last night saw that there were artists doing a rendition in chalk of the passengers on Flight 93, and I said we have to do a road trip," said Steve Muthler from Antes Fort.
We met Steve Muthler from Lycoming County inside the museum that now tells the Flight 93 story. It's a tale of heroism because the passengers on Flight 93 decided to fight back against those hijackers.
You can listen to the harrowing phone calls passengers made from the plane.
"You think about the terror those 40 people must have gone through. I don't know if I would have had the fortitude to decide what they did. They made the right decision."
While a grand tribute to those Flight 93 heroes now stands on this spot, it still holds on to the feeling of peace many of us felt visiting this spot in the years after the crash before all this.
It's a peace that's a gift you feel in much of rural Pennsylvania. But here, that peace is knowing this is a resting place for heroes who won the first battle against terror and kept that plane from hitting its likely target, the U.S. Capitol.
"Kids here who weren't born when it happened—that's what history is. There's a transition from memory to history, and they're beginning to make that here."