The positioning of a 1956 airplane collision over Arizona’s Grand Canyon Nationwide Park has been designated a Nationwide Historic Landmark. However don’t plan on visiting it; you'll be able to’t.
U.S. Secretary of the Inside Sally Jewel final week anointed this as a nationwide landmark, however the Nationwide Park Service has lengthy restricted anybody from climbing to the wreckage that fell in a distant and rugged a part of the canyon.
Within the crash, a TWA Tremendous Constellation L-1049 and a United Airways DC-7 collided about 21,000 ft over the Grand Canyon, killing 128 folks on board. The locations the place the 2 planes crashed into the bottom are about 1 1/2 miles aside, however the particular places have been redacted from the Nationwide Park Service’s nomination paperwork.
The landmark, formally named the 1956 Grand Canyon TWA-United Airways Aviation Accident Website, joins 2,540 websites which have been designated nationwide.
What makes it worthy of recognition? The collision spurred an effort to modernize and improve airline security, resulting in the creation of the Federal Aviation Administration and different advances, in accordance with an April 23 announcement by the park service.
And that makes it a part of our historical past and heritage.
This story in The Atlantic studies: “The designation is uncommon. For one factor, it might be the primary landmark to commemorate one thing that occurred solely within the air.
“‘And we’ve by no means executed an precise crash website,’ stated Alexandra Lord, department chief of the Nationwide Historic Landmarks Program in Washington. ‘In some methods we are able to argue that the crash itself—which led to the scattering of items over an enormous particles area—is what’s essential. And it type of doesn’t matter in case you consider it as on the air or on the bottom.’ ”
Three different landmarks had been designated together with the air accident website. They embody:
--The Adlai E. Stevenson II Farm in Mettawa, Sick., which was the house of two-time Democratic candidate for U.S. president and U.N. ambassador.
--The Detroit Business Murals, Detroit Institute of Arts, which had been created by Mexican artist Diego Rivera within the early Thirties.
--George Nakashima Woodworker Advanced in Bucks County, Pa., which was constructed and utilized by the furnishings designer and maker.
“These 4 new nationwide historic landmarks are as various as our American heritage, telling tales of triumph and tragedy, of devoted public service and creative magnificence,” Jewell stated within the assertion.
Mary.Forgione@latimes.com
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