Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum

At 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, a truck bomb exploded on Fifth Street at the north entrance of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. It killed 168 people, injured about 850, and damaged more than 300 buildings downtown. Within days memorial ideas were arriving from strangers, and by July 1995 a task force had written the mission the site still keeps: to remember those who were killed, those who survived and those changed forever. Families and survivors had the first voice at every step. Eight of them sat on the fifteen-member committee that on June 24, 1997, chose Hans and Torrey Butzer's design from more than six hundred entries.

Fifth Street became the reflecting pool, framed by the 9:01 and 9:03 gates. On the building's footprint stand 168 chairs in nine rows, one for each floor, each placed on the floor where the person was that morning; five more to the west mark those killed outside the building, and three unborn children are named on their mothers' chairs. The Survivor Wall is made of granite slabs from the Murrah Building, set on its one standing wall. On October 25, 1998, families, survivors and rescuers moved 210 feet of the first fence, where people had left tokens, to Harvey Avenue, and people still leave things there.

The museum fills the Journal Record Building of 1923, whose roof the blast tore off. A private foundation runs the site, and Park Service rangers are on the grounds daily.