Travel to Vietnam Veterans Memorial

The winning design of a contest in 1980 by Yale architectural student Maya Lin was initially a source of heated controversy, with many feeling the hypersimplistic memorial was bleak, nihilistic, or just plain ugly. Today, however, it serves as a powerful reminder of the brave men and women who sacrificed their lives during the highly controversial Vietnam War. Each year, thousands of items are left at the memorial. They are catalogued and stored safely away by the nearby Smithsonian.