B-52 Bomber Memorial on Elephant Mountain

This site is listed as a walk in some of my literature on the Greenville area. But I didn’t experience it really as a walk, more like an extraordinary and unique historical site that you can wander slowly through. Yet, because it does make it into so much of the local walking brochures of this region, I’m going to include it.

In 1963, a U.S. B-52 Stratofortress bomber with a nine-person crew crashed into the side of Elephant Mountain during a blizzard after running into turbulence and mechanical trouble. Only two of the nine crew members survived because they were able to eject before impact (although one of their parachutes failed to open!). They then had to withstand a night in below-freezing temperatures. When you visit the site, you can see that the plane broke into a thousand pieces over a half-mile area. Supposedly each piece of the plane, after being removed for the investigation, was returned to the exact spot it landed.

After driving a very long time on rough dirt roads, you can walk a 0.25-mile circuit through the plane’s debris field. People have placed wreaths and flags on the broken pieces.

Directions: From Greenville, drive north on Lily Bay Road for 7 miles. Turn right onto Prong Pond Road and drive 3.7 miles. Bear left at a fork. In another 1.7 miles, cross a bridge and take your next left .1 miles later. The parking area is just under two miles from this point. There should be plane signs up helping you find your way through this maze of back roads, which can be in fairly rough shape. It helps to have a tough car.