page_title: Dealey Plaza
section_title: Grassy knoll
hierarchical_section_title: Dealey Plaza / Grassy knoll
caption_attribution_description: English: Pictured is the western half of the grassy knoll along the north side of Elm Street in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. In the background is the railroad overpass known as the Triple Underpass. To the right is a picket fence, one leg of which connects with the Triple Underpass, and the other which extends about twenty feet off the right side of the photograph. At the bottom of the photograph is the walk that leads from a stairway up the knoll to the parking lot behind the picket fence. The photographer was standing on a retaining wall at the southwest corner of a pergola on the knoll, the same position from which Abraham Zapruder filmed the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963.
context_page_description: Dealey Plaza is a city park in the West End district of downtown Dallas, Texas. It is sometimes called the "birthplace of Dallas". It also was the location of the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy, on November 22, 1963; 30 minutes after the shooting, Kennedy died at Parkland Memorial Hospital. The Dealey Plaza Historic District was named a National Historic Landmark on November 22, 1993, the 30th anniversary of the JFK assassination, to preserve Dealey Plaza, street rights-of-way, and buildings and structures by the plaza visible from the assassination site, that have been identified as witness locations or as possible locations for assassin.
context_section_description: The grassy knoll is a small, sloping hill inside the plaza that became of interest following the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy. The knoll was above Kennedy and to his right (west and north) during the assassination on November 22, 1963.
  This north grassy knoll is adjacent by the former Texas School Book Depository building along the Elm Street abutment side street to the northeast, Elm Street, and a sidewalk to the south, a parking lot to the north and east and a railroad bridge atop the triple underpass convergence of Commerce, Main and Elm streets to the west.
  Located near the north grassy knoll on November 22, 1963, there were several witnesses, three large traffic signposts, four sidewalk lamp posts, the John Neely Bryan north pergola concrete structure including its two enclosed shelters, a tool shed, one 3.3 foot (1 m) high concrete wall connected to each of the pergola shelters; ten tall, wide, low-hanging live oak trees; a five-foot (1.5 m) tall, wooden, cornered, stockade fenceline measured at approximately 169 feet (53.6 m) long; six street curb sewer openings, their sewer manholes and their interconnecting large pipes; and several 2 to 6 foot (0.6 to 1.8 m) tall bushes, trees and hedges.
  The term "grassy knoll" was first used to describe this area by reporter Albert Merriman Smith of UPI, who was riding in the press "pool car" following the motorcade and had use of the car's radio-telephone. In his second dispatch from the car just 25 minutes after the shooting, he said, "Some of the Secret Service agents thought the gunfire was from an automatic weapon fired to the right rear of the president's car, probably from a grassy knoll to which police rushed." These words were then repeated on national television by CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite in his second CBS bulletin on the shooting.
  Out of the 104 Dealey Plaza earwitness reports published by the Commission and elsewhere, 56 recorded testimony that they remembered hearing at least one shot fired from either the Depository or near the Houston/Elm Street intersection. 35 witnesses recorded testimony of at least one shot fired from either the grassy knoll or the triple underpass. Eight stated that they heard shots being fired from elsewhere, and five testified that the shots were fired from two different directions.
  Because of the persistent debate, answered and unanswered questions, and conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination as well as the possible related role of the grassy knoll, the term "grassy knoll" has come to also be a modern slang expression indicating suspicion, conspiracy, or a cover-up.
caption: The wooden picket fence atop the grassy knoll, and the Triple Underpass with the highway sign, which at the time of the assassination read "Fort Worth Turnpike Keep Right", as similarly seen in the Zapruder film. The knoll is where many conspiracy theorists believe another gunman stood.
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