ALPINE — On Thursday morning, a crowd of around 200 gathered at the Alpine Border Patrol Station to mark the 24th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of thousands of people on the morning of September 11, 2001. The centerpiece of the ceremony is a 1,300-pound hunk of twisted metal — a corner brace from one of the fallen World Trade Center towers.
The Sentinel wondered: how did a piece of one of the most pivotal events in American history end up in Brewster County?
There are a handful of 9/11 memorials around the state that feature wreckage from Ground Zero: the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History has a steel column, and the Texas State Cemetery in Austin has a monument dedicated by former Governor Rick Perry. But the Alpine Station’s memorial is the only one west of Fort Worth — and the only one in the state on federal property.
The link between the events of 9/11 and the Border Patrol in Far West Texas may have been written in the stars. Construction on the Alpine Station on Highway 90 was scheduled to start in 2001, and the official groundbreaking ceremony was scheduled for the morning of September 11.
Just after the towers fell, a Border Patrol color guard troupe performed for a gathered crowd of federal officials and local leaders from across the Tri-County, all of whom were freshly processing the devastating news. “It was surreal,” said former Deputy Patrol Agent-in-Charge Lewis Reynolds. “There was a call to duty, but we didn’t quite know what that was yet.”
9/11 marked a major shift for the Border Patrol, which was reorganized under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003. Border security tightened under the leadership of George W. Bush — in the Big Bend, that meant that informal crossings in places like Lajitas and Boquillas shuttered, permanently changing the rhythm of life along the border.
As the 10th anniversary of the attacks neared, Reynolds and a few of his colleagues at the station wanted to find a special way to mark the event. After doing some research, he discovered that the Port Authority of New York was responsible for cleaning up the scene at Ground Zero; they’d figured out a creative way to whittle down a massive pile of debris — local organizations could apply to display a piece of the rubble.
Reynolds’ application was successful, and about a month before the anniversary, he and Supervisory Border Patrol Agent David Marshall set off on a 2,100 mile odyssey to JFK International Airport, where the Port Authority was storing pieces of the World Trade Center in a hangar. They strapped the beam approved for transport to the back of a stake bed truck and set off for the Big Bend.
When the agents reached the outskirts of Alpine, it felt like everyone in town stopped what they were doing and went outside to watch the truck go by and pay their respects. “I’ve never seen anything like it — all through town, people lining the sidewalks,” Reynolds said. “It was a very emotional thing.”
The whole community had a hand in helping prepare the artifact for its debut. Off-duty agents poured the slab for the memorial and set up a lighting system, and Ernest Rodriguez offered his welding talents to create the polished memorial. The finished product came together with just 48 hours to go before the unveiling.
On the morning of September 11, 2011, a crowd of nearly 700 people gathered at the Alpine Station to see a piece of American history. Former Brewster County Judge Val Beard was the keynote speaker, and Chief Patrol Agent John J. Smietana Jr. gave a somber address.
Reynolds was particularly moved by a woman who asked for permission to touch the memorial. She — along with the rest of the country — had huddled in front of a TV screen that fateful morning, watching the course of national history warp in real time. “It happened in New York, it happened in Shanksville [Pennsylvania], it happened at the Pentagon,” he remembered her saying. “It also happened here. It happened to all of us.”
Fast forward 14 years through a major tourism boom, and thousands of travelers a year make the pilgrimage through Far West Texas — the vast majority probably not realizing the gravity of the memorial signaled by a humble sign on the driveway into the station.
The memorial got a shout out today in an Instagram post from the Alpine tourism board, but it’s not regularly featured in materials aimed at tourists. One of its few digital traces is on Roadside America, a site dedicated to off-highway kitsch. “How tragically ironic that a building dedicated to the safety and security of the United States should begin construction at the exact moment that other buildings, some 2,000 miles away, would be destroyed by enemies of this country who would see us all perish,” the site’s post reads.
Reynolds, who put heart, sweat and tears into the memorial, considers it one of his proudest accomplishments in a long career with the U.S. Border Patrol. Sharing stories about a moment that made heroes out of ordinary Americans is particularly important, he says, now that the agency’s youngest members were born after 9/11. “The key to this whole thing was to remember this event so we don’t repeat it,” he said.