A secluded section of farmland in Hunterdon County that served as a somber gathering area on 9/11 is being transformed into a permanent memorial just in time for the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.
Hilltop Preserve in Raritan Township has a high elevation — about 700 feet above sea level — and offered a view of smoke rising more than 45 miles away from the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001.
A small portion of the 58-acre site, which remains an active farm, has been set aside to remember 9/11 and the 15 Hunterdon County residents killed in the attacks, Hunterdon County Sheriff Fred Brown said.
"There's been complete cooperation from everyone involved," said Brown, who was Raritan's police chief on 9/11.
Work on the site was ongoing last week but Brown said the goal is to have everything in place in time for the county's annual ceremony on Sept. 11. In prior years, the remembrance was held at other locations including the courthouse in Flemington.
A plaque will be installed on a large stone at the site. As of last week, it had not arrived, Brown said.
When the memorial opens, visitors will be able to see a pentagon-shaped flower bed honoring those killed at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, along with two trees representing the World Trade Center towers.
Those walking along a trail will pass by plants native to the area in Pennsylvania where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after passengers overpowered the hijackers.
The site also will include a pavilion with four picnic tables for visitors, Brown said.
"It is our responsibility to ensure that future generations understand the significance of Sept. 11 and never forget those who were affected," Brown said.
More than 700 killed in the 9/11 attacks lived in New Jersey. While many of the state's more than 150 monuments, statues, plaques and gardens were erected in the first decade after the attacks, others are more recent.
In 2024, a memorial to emergency medical services workers opened in Keansburg in Monmouth County. North Bergen dedicated a 9/11 memorial in 2022.
The state's official memorial, Empty Sky at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, opened in 2011.
Hunterdon County is home to other tributes. In 2024, Lebanon Township dedicated a 9/11 memorial at Memorial Park that includes 27-foot conjoined steel girders from the World Trade Center wreckage, a plaque, U.S. flag and benches.
A 9/11 memorial consisting of steel and marble recovered from the World Trade Center was erected in 2012 outside the Annandale Hose Company in Clinton Township.
Raritan, with 22,000 residents, is the most populated of Hunterdon County's 26 municipalities.
Hilltop Preserve, location of the new memorial, was known as the Ewing farm until 2012 when county and state funds were used to ensure it would remain as open space, according to the sheriff's office.
The new memorial will be dedicated Sept. 11 in a ceremony that will start at 8:30 a.m., Brown said.
The guest speaker will be Mark Desire, assistant director of the New York City medical examiner's office and manager of the World Trade Center DNA Identification Team.
Brown said the new memorial "will serve as a lasting reminder of the lives taken, the sacrifices made, and the resilience that emerged in the aftermath of that day."
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