TEXAS — On July 17, 2011, two Watauga firefighters set out on a five-day round-trip journey to New York City to pick up a piece of history from one of America’s most tragic days. The firefighters, Ben Westcott and Jeff Hawkins, returned to Watauga, a small city northeast of Fort Worth, with a section of steel from the World Trade Center, a token of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

What You Need To Know

  • Hundreds of Texas towns and cities received artifacts from the World Trade Center

  • The pieces are located across the state and now serve as memorials to the victims of 9/11

  • Such memorials exist in all 50 states and at least 10 countries

Hundreds of firefighters and emergency workers lost their lives that day, when terrorists hijacked two commercial airliners and flew them into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, as well as attacking the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and crashing United flight 93 in Somerset County, Pa.

As the firefighters entered Watauga with the steel beam in tow, they were met by members of the North Richland Hills and Haltom City Fire Departments, who escorted them down Denton Highway to Watauga’s Central Fire Station. 

Today, the 10-foot steel beam stands outside the Watauga fire station as a memorial honoring the firefighters and other men and women in uniform who died in New York City that day.,

Across the country, thousands of 9/11 memorials have been erected from pieces of twisted metal from the Twin Towers, scraps of burned emergency vehicles and other objects recovered from what became known as Ground Zero at the World Trade Center. Distributed under a program called the Port Authority Program, about 2,000 pieces retrieved from the wreckage were shipped to 50 states and 10 foreign nations since 2010. 

The majority of the pieces were given to museums, town governments, schools, non-profit organizations, and police, fire, law enforcement and emergency response departments across the country. China, Russia, England and Canada also received pieces. Recipients were required to commit to displaying the pieces in public.

Spectrum News 1 has located many such 9/11 memorials across Texas. While not an exhaustive collection, the photo essay below shows the impact the attacks had here in Texas, 20 years later and some 1,500 miles away from Ground Zero.  

“Approximately 15,000 cities across the nation made applications to receive a piece of steel from the World Trade Center. The City of Watauga was honored as a selected city,” the city stated on its website shortly after its memorial was dedicated on Sept. 11, 2011.