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| First flight |
The Kitty Hawk Memorial to the Wright brothers Orville and Wilber is an inspiring place. I had no idea that it would impress me as it has, as a monument to everyday people who do great things. On this sand dune, Kill Devil Hill, the brothers tested kites and gliders for two years, and then flew their flier four times on the beach at the base of the dune. At the end of the day a wind gust took the flier and smashed it to bits. Luckily for them, they had a guy take a picture of their accomplishment, and were able to show that manned flight was possible.
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| Wright Bros Memorial |
I guess what I find inspirational, is that these guys discovered how to fly on their own, and they did it at Kitty Hawk because in those days the area was pretty much deserted. They did not want a lot of people around to distract them from their pursuit of flight.
They lived and worked in Dayton Ohio. They built their kites, gliders, and the flier there. All was disassembled and shipped by train and by boat to Kitty Hawk a journey of seven days. They lived and worked in a garage like structure out on the dunes. The reasons they chose Kitty Hawk was that it was consistently windy, sparsely populated and that it was sandy. They knew they were going to crash a few times and sand is a lot softer than hard land.
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| The Wrights airfield |
Today the dunes are covered with grass and there sit replicas of the two wooden buildings they used, and monument stones which depict how far they flew on each flight. On the top of Kill Devil Hill there is a large memorial to Orville and Wilbur erected by Congress in 1932. There is a visitors center with a replica of the flier (the original is in the Air and Space Museum in DC) One of the pictures on display is Wilbur with Amelia Earhart taken in 1932.
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| Kill Devil Hill |
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