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An emotional fight over land for Flight 93 memorial

A chain link fence now stands between Tim Lambert's land and the impact site of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed here on September 11, 2001. The property has been in Lambert's family for almost 80 years.

"My grandfather purchased about 200 acres in the 1930s, and he would cut timber and sell the timber off, and he would build cabins as well," Lambert says. "That's how he got the family through the Depression."

Lambert says he had no plans for the land, he just knew he wanted to hold on to it. "There's a lot of natural resources in this area -- natural gas, coal," he says.

That all changed the day 40 passengers and crew died trying to take control of a Boeing 757 that had been hijacked by four terrorists as it took off from Newark, New Jersey, bound for San Francisco, California. It is believed the hijackers had intended crash the plane into the White House or the U.S. Capitol.

Plans for a permanent memorial have been in the works for years. Congress passed a law in 2002 instructing the National Park Service to establish a national memorial where the crash occurred. Part of it would be on Lambert's land.

In the seven years since, some of the most important land needed for the massive project has remained in limbo, producing an emotional debate among landowners, family members and the National Park Service.
Read entire article at CNN