Infamous for its location alongside the road where John F Kennedy’s motorcade was ambushed in November 1963, the tiny park known as Dealey Plaza is now a haunting, eerily familiar National Historic Landmark. It was created in 1935, however, to mark the center of the original settlement of Dallas.
Lee Harvey Oswald fired the fatal shots from the former Book Depository, immediately north. However, some witnesses also heard shots coming from the so-called 'grassy knoll' alongside, a hillock that rises from Elm St to the railroad yards. The conclusion of the 1970s’ House Select Committee on Assassinations, that a sniper did indeed fire (and miss) from behind the picket fence here, bolstered the belief that Kennedy’s assassination was part of a conspiracy.