 More 2019 Adventures |
Hebron, KY → Dayton, OH, → Jeffersonville, IN 288.0 mi (463.5 km) |
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Let’s fly, everyone!
I’m embarking on a tri-state trip that’s turned the heads of everyone I’ve told about it! Nevertheless, I’ve returned to the Buckeye State to explore some of its national park sites and some more in the surrounding areas. Starting on a misty morning in Cincinnati, I began my journey north to the first site!
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About an hour later, I arrived in the city of Dayton, widely considered the birthplace of aviation, though after Kitty Hawk, I’d say it was more of a childhood of aviation. It was here that Orville and Wilbur Wright returned to perfect their flying machine after getting too tired of the remote, mosquito-infested beaches of North Carolina!
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Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park celebrates their achievements with the preservation of two original buildings where the Wright Brothers worked: their bike shop and their printing business!
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The Wright Brothers owned and operated this bicycle shop for two years between 1895 and 1897, and during that time, they built a gas engine and chain drives, which both built up their money reserves and led to the development of their first plane, the Flyer 1! They did this on the lower level while running their print shop on the upper level. Across the way in the visitor center, I got to see that print center where they got their start!
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The Wright Brothers built their own custom printing press and assembled news articles letter by letter for mass printing! They produced pamphlets and weekly newspapers like the West Side News and The Dayton Tattler, which they made for their high school friend, Paul Laurence Dunbar!
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I would learn a lot more about Mr. Dunbar on the way out of the visitor center. According to the ranger at the register, there was an Aviation Trail scavenger hunt that I could participate in! Could I see 8 of the 17 sites on the map? Well, I’ve never been one to turn down a challenge, so with my map in hand, freshly stamped at the visitor center, I headed out into the streets of Dayton to explore some more aviation history!
My first (second) stop on the list was Site 2, Paul Laurence Dunbar’s house. Mr. Dunbar was an internationally acclaimed poet, born to freed slaves from Kentucky and educated here in Dayton alongside the Wrights! He wrote novels, short stories, and essays, and his greatest claim to fame was in the poems he wrote in the dialects of Southern plantation owners!
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Originally, Mr. Dunbar wanted to be a lawyer, but his mom didn’t have enough money to send him to school. Instead, he worked as an elevator operator, not a great job, but it gave him time to write! The museum in his home still has the bicycle that he rode to work every day! After networking with two Jameses, Newton Matthews and Whitcomb Riley, Mr. Dunbar published his first anthology, Oak and Ivy, in 1893 and went on to an illustrious and influential career as a poet!
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Next, I hopped all the way over to Stop 17: Sinclair National UAS Training and Certification Center! Sinclair College is the major sponsor of this scavenger hunt, and I was lucky to get my third stamp here on a weekend! This is the top program in the country for aviation training, both traditional and unmanned!
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Next, I visited a somber spot, the Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum, Stop 8! This is where the Wrights and Mr. Dunbar are buried, pretty close to each other! The cemetery itself is on the National Register of Historic Places! I paid my respects at their graves, but as you know, I don’t take photos inside cemeteries and moved on to my next stop shortly.
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Further down the road, I scoped out the model flyer hovering in the core of the Paul Laurence Dunbar Library at Wright State University (Stop 10)! This library houses the world’s largest collection of Wright brothers manuscripts from technical papers to personal diaries! There are over 4,000 photographs from the history of aviation and the Wright brothers’ lives, but alas! Being a weekend, the special collections section was closed!
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My sixth stop, numbered 5, was the National Museum of the United States Air Force, a truly massive complex of full-sized planes from many eras of history! It, by itself, would—and should—have filled the entire day, but I was already running low on daylight and could only marvel briefly at its monuments and flying machines!
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Within Stop 5, though, was Stop 6, the National Aviation Hall of Fame! This hall within the museum spotlights pioneers of the air and has since 1962! Stunt pilots, war heroes, and even prototype hovercrafts are all on display for discovery, but I’d bitten off way more than I could gnaw for a single day’s adventure, and I had to conclude my adventure!
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I reached the Huffman Prairie Flying Field Interpretive Center, my eight and final stop on this whirlwind adventure, around 3:00 PM, and a goggled bear named Wilbear came out to congratulate me in front of the Wright Brothers Memorial, overlooking Huffman Prairie Flying Field, where they perfected their invention, called the Wright Flyer III, in 1905, two years after their famous first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina!
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After shaking paws with Wilbear, I ambled down to the Huffman Prairie on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to get a glimpse of the world’s first airport! Here, they struggled to get their flyer to launch in Dayton’s weak winds and did, for a while at least, have to use a catapult to get their planes into the air! Once they perfected their design, they opened a flying school here, which ran from 1910 until 1916!
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After embarking on what turned out to be a much more complex exploration of aviation history than I expected, I really came to understand what “Time Flies” meant! I was out of time for several other stops I’d meant to make, but I’d had a lot of fun chasing down aviation history. Eight stops is just under half of the total 17, so if you’re ever in Dayton, I’d suggest making a weekend or a week of it! For now, I must take off to another state and another historic exploration!
Fasten your seatbelts!
More 2019 Adventures |
Total Ground Covered: 288.0 mi (463.5 km) |
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