NEW YORK, NY. (WHTM) — Sept. 11, 2001, is a day that will live in infamy for the United States. There have been thousands of memorials, both temporary and permanent, that honor the nearly 3,000 people who died on that day.
But there is one memorial that appears every year during the evening on Sept. 11 in New York City.
Called Tribute in Light, the memorial comprises of two large beams of light that reach nearly four miles into the night sky. The two beams are not only to fill the void where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center once stood but it also is to remember and honor the lives lost on that day.
The tribute was first presented on the six-month anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. It ran as a temporary installation from March 11, to April 14, 2002. Every year since then, the two beams have shined high into the sky every year on Sept. 11.
In 2002, the two light beams were set up in a vacant lot across from Ground Zero on West Street, according to the 9/11 memorial, and they are not set up on top of a lower Manhattan parking garage. The tribute consists of 88 high-powered lights and is assembled in two squares to echo the footprints of the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center.
According to Biodiesel Magazine, in 2008 the lights were powered by biodiesel made from used cooking oil from lower Manhattan restaurants.
Tribute in Light, two vertical columns of light representing the fallen towers of the World Trade Center shine against the lower Manhattan skyline on the 19th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, seen from Jersey City, N.J., Friday, Sept. 11, 2020. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah) 
The annual “Tribute in Light” is illuminated on the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021, in New York. (AP Photo/Brittainy Newman) 
FILE – In this Sept. 11, 2020, file photo tribute in Light, two vertical columns of light representing the fallen towers of the World Trade Center shine against the lower Manhattan skyline on the 19th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, seen from Jersey City, N.J. As the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks approaches, Americans increasingly balk at intrusive government surveillance in the name of national security, and only about a third believe that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were worth fighting, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah, File) 
The annual Tribute in Light is illuminated above Lower Manhattan on the 21st anniversary of 9/11 on Sunday, Sept. 11, 2022, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson) 
The annual Tribute in Light is illuminated above Lower Manhattan in New York on the 21st anniversary of 9/11 on Sept. 11, 2022. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)
The 9/11 Memorial website states that the beams reach up to four miles into the sky and are the most powerful shafts of light ever projected from Earth. When skies are clear, the beams can be seen within a 60-mile radius.
The Tribute in Light serves as a memorial to the 2,983 people who were killed, the two towers that were destroyed, and a tribute to those who helped the city, and the country, through the days after the attacks.
