Twenty-Five Years Later: Timberon and Alamogordo Remembers 9/11

ALAMOGORDO, N.M. — A quarter century after the September 11 attacks, the communities of the Tularosa Basin and Sacramento Mountains are pausing to remember — from the flats of Alamogordo and Tularosa to the forested canyon community of Timberon.

Friday, September 11, 2026, marks 25 years since 2,983 men, women, and children were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and aboard United Flight 93 — a toll that includes the victims of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing memorialized alongside them. In New York, families gathered at the National September 11 Memorial plaza at 8:30 a.m. Eastern to read the names aloud, observing seven moments of silence — a new, seventh pause added this year to honor the more than 9,000 people who have since died of 9/11-related illnesses, nearly three times the number killed on the day itself.

President Trump marked the anniversary at the Pentagon, while Vice President JD Vance joined former presidents Obama, Bush, Clinton, and Biden at Ground Zero. But as in every year since 2001, the most personal acts of remembrance happened far from the cameras — in small towns like ours.

Alamogordo: Climb the Cube

The centerpiece of Otero County's commemoration comes Saturday, September 12, when the New Mexico Museum of Space History and the Alamogordo Fire Department host Climb the Cube: 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb at the museum, 3198 State Route 2001.

Registration opens at 7:30 a.m., and participants will be staggered into the climb beginning at 8:46 a.m. — the minute American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower. Climbers will complete 12 circuits of the museum's iconic golden cube, representing the 110 flights of stairs in the Twin Towers, joining a nationwide stair-climb tradition honoring the 343 New York firefighters who ascended into the burning buildings and never came down.

The event is family-friendly and open to everyone — residents, first responders, businesses, schools, and community organizations are encouraged to climb individually or form teams. Advance registration is available at SpaceTrail.org/sites/StairClimb, with day-of registration starting at 7:30 a.m. As a thank-you, first responders and their immediate families receive free museum admission from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on September 12.

For a community that lives alongside Holloman Air Force Base and sent its sons and daughters into two decades of war that began that September morning, the climb is more than exercise. Every step is a name.

Timberon: Remembrance in the high country

Tucked into Sacramento Canyon at 7,000 feet, Timberon is a community of a few hundred souls served entirely by volunteers. The Timberon Volunteer Fire Department, organized in 1974 and operating today from its new station on Merlin Drive, is the beating heart of the community — which gives September 11 a particular weight in a place where every firefighter is a neighbor.

For volunteer departments like Timberon's, the anniversary of the day 343 firefighters died doing the job is felt keenly. Residents can check with the fire department — which meets the first Thursday of each month at 6:30 p.m. at the station — or the Timberon community calendar at timberon.org for local observances, and are welcome at the Alamogordo stair climb, where teams from across Otero County are invited to participate.

Why we still gather

Twenty-five years is long enough that a generation of Otero County students has no memory of the day. It is why organizers of the national commemoration added the seventh moment of silence, why the museum climb invites schools to send teams, and why small towns keep showing up year after year — at fire stations, on courthouse lawns, on museum stairs in the high desert.

The towers fell over2,000 miles from the Tularosa Basin. The obligation to remember did not.

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