Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum!

What Is the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum?

This was the home of Alfred and Amelia Otis, whose aviatrix granddaughter, Amelia Earhart, was born here on July 24, 1897!

What Makes It Historical?

Despite her many wanderings, Amelia Earhart always considered Atchison her home, and this house overlooking the Missouri River in particular! That’s because her father, Edwin, traveled a lot as a lawyer and railroad claims agent, leaving her and her siter, Murial, with their grandparents a lot. She grew up doing adventurous things like climbing trees and hunting rats, even skipping two whole grades in grammar school!

It was her traveling father that introduced her to flight, buying her a 10-minute plane ride in 1920! Within a year, she had her pilot’s license, and within another, she had her own personal plane and record-setting flight of 14,000 feet in altitude!

She’d go on to break records for another fifteen years, setting several speed records for women pilots, and another record for any pilot flying between Mexico City and Washington, DC! She was the first woman to pilot an autogyro (like a plane-helicopter hybrid) and took it to a record height of 18,415 feet! She was the first woman to fly solo and nonstop across the USA and the Atlantic Ocean, but she was the first person of any gender to cross the Atlantic twice by air, to fly from Honolulu to the mainland, and to fly solo from Mexico City to Newark, New Jersey! Sadly, in her push to be the first woman to fly around the world, she and her copilot, Fred Noonan, disappeared over the Pacific on July 2, 1937.

When she wasn’t airborne, Ms. Earhart was promoting getting airborne! She championed air travel as safe and reliable and pushed for women to learn how to fly or at least to get an education and career, promoting birth control rights and women in politics. Along the way, she married her publisher, George Putnam, who also helped her manage her fashion brand, Amelia Fashions, which made clothes for active women and luggage for adventurers!

How Can I #HelpTheHelpers?

Pay the entrance fee to help maintain trails, signs, structures, and other visitor services!
Donate to the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum!
Be a responsible visitor! Please respect the signs and pathways, and treat all structures and artifacts with respect. They’ve endured a lot to survive into the present. They’ll need our help to make it into the future!