Vietnam Veterans National Memorial

The panel's 1968 is the year the chapel was begun, not finished. Jeanne Westphall proposed it on June 12, 1968, three weeks after her son David and fifteen other Marines died in an ambush near Con Thien, and his life insurance paid for the start. It was dedicated on May 22, 1971, eleven years before the national wall. The Disabled American Veterans returned it to the family's foundation in 1998, and it was deeded to the state on Veterans Day 2005. A bronze by the chapel records soil carried between this hill and the ambush site in 1994.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Vietnam Veterans National Memorial This chapel was erected in 1968 by Dr. Victor Westphall in memory of his son David Westphall and all U.S. personnel killed in the fighting in Vietnam. It was first dedicated as the Vietnam Veterans Peace and Brotherhood Chapel, and on May 30, 1983, it was rededicated as the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) Vietnam Veterans National Memorial.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Taos Pueblo — 14 mi
  Two terraced adobe houses facing each other across Red Willow Creek, lived in for something like a thousand years, with no electricity or running water inside the old walls.
• San Francisco de Asís Church, Ranchos de Taos — 19 mi
  The adobe church at Ranchos de Taos that artists always paint from behind, kept standing by the mud its parish spreads over it every June.
• St. James Hotel — 21 mi
  Henri Lambert's 1872 inn and saloon on the Santa Fe Trail at Cimarron, a stage for the Colfax County War, where the old saloon ceiling still shows 22 bullet holes.
• Rio Grande Gorge Bridge — 25 mi
  A steel truss strung across a slot in the basalt west of Taos, 565 feet above the river by the careful measure and 650 by the signs, built when the road beyond it did not yet exist.

More markers nearby

• Palo Flechado Pass — 3.1 mi
• Wheeler Peak — 4.7 mi
• Eagle Nest Lake State Park — 7.8 mi
• Elizabethtown — 8.0 mi