Existing comment:
This island is called "The Memorial to the Signers of the Declaration of Independence." It was opened in 1976 as part of the Constitution Gardens, all part of the bicentennial events. It's not a huge tourist attraction although it's located between the Washington Monument and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. In fact, most people probably hadn't heard of it at all until "the tobacco terrorist", a disgruntled tobacco farmer from North Carolina, drove his tobacco truck into the lake here, said he had explosives, and closed down Constitution Avenue and several government buildings around it for two days in March 2003. Given that this was during the Iraq II war and all of the heightened national security in the capital, it was more than a little disconcerting to see that one guy could disrupt the whole city for that long. |