FLIGHT 93 Running out of space for tributes

People have come from across the country to leave trinkets at the crash site.
SHANKSVILLE, Pa. (AP) -- From buttons to laminated poems to painted rocks to uniforms, curators in Somerset County have vowed to log every one of the tributes and mementos left to honor the 40 passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93.
But with more than 10,000 items collected so far, the Somerset County Historical and Genealogical Society will have to find a larger facility to store them.
"We are going to start having to move some things to a secure storage area," said Barbara Black, the society's curator. "There's really no other room here on site."
Officials will begin looking for a new space within a month.
"I don't think I could have predicted at that time that the collection would grow -- that people would continue to bring things," Black said.
People have come from around the country to leave trinkets and memorabilia in the remote field, 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, where the hijacked plane crashed.
Memorial planned
Somerset County officials plan to eventually incorporate all the items into a national memorial that will be administered by the National Park Service. A design for the memorial is to be presented to Congress within three years. It is to be built at the crash site.
"The idea is, this is all part of the historical significance. These are artifacts, and they should be preserved," said Jim Marker, a Somerset commissioner.
The historical and genealogical society recently received a $30,000 grant from the National Park Service to support efforts to record the oral histories of resident and emergency workers.
Around the anniversary of the crash, several thousand people visited the crash site, leaving hundreds more items.
The flight, which was headed from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco, was the only one of four flights hijacked Sept. 11, 2001, that did not take a life on the ground. Investigators believe it was headed toward a target in Washington. They believe it was brought down when people on board confronted the hijackers.
The 40 passengers and crew have been hailed as heroes in what some have called the first battle in America's war against terrorism.