Hello! Welcome back to our blog on the National Park
Service. We are back in our native Ohio at
a park that showcases the origin of why our state is “The Birthplace of
Aviation” at Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park.
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| Entrance Sign and Cycle Shop visitor center. |
BACKGROUND:
On
December 17th, 1903, two brothers achieved the impossible. At Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Wilbur and
Orville Wright from Dayton Ohio succeeded in making the first flight in a
modern aircraft. While it had been
possible to take to the air using balloons since the 1700s, it was the first
time that a heavier-than-air powered machine had achieved flight. The event had been the culmination of the
brothers’ lifelong dream that had begun years earlier.
The
Wright Brothers had long had dreams of success.
In their hometown of Dayton, the brothers had entered into multiple
business ventures, most notably a newspaper and a bicycle shop. But it was the dream of inventing a flying
machine that continued to drive them.
After their great success at Kitty Hawk, they returned to Dayton to
continue their work. Seeing the obvious entrepreneurial
potential of powered flight, the brothers worked to secure patents for their
aircraft and continued experimenting to perfect their airplane. After countless test flights, crashes,
rebuilds, and refinements at their rudimentary airfield at Huffman Prairie
outside Dayton, the Wrights had perfected their airplane. Although Wilbur would die young in 1909,
Orville would continue on, building an aircraft factory in 1910, and remaining
active in aviation until his passing in 1948.
At
the same time the Wright Brothers were working their way toward powered flight,
another Dayton native was rising to prominence in the literary world. Paul Laurence Dunbar, a friend and classmate
of the Wright Brothers had been among the earliest black writers to rise to
national acclaim for his poetry and other literary works, getting his start after
the Wright Brothers had printed his publications in their newspaper. This pioneering writer however, like Wilbur
Wright, died tragically young in 1906.
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| The 1905 Wright Flyer, on display at the Wright Aviation Center within Carillon Historical Park. |
THE PARK:
Dayton
Aviation Heritage National Historical Park preserves six locales associated
with the Wright Brothers and Paul Laurence Dunbar in and around Dayton, Ohio. The primary visitor center for the site is
located on Dayton’s west side, housed in the building which once held the
offices of the Wright Brothers printing business. Behind the visitor center is one of the Wrights’
Bicycle shops (the Wrights operated several prior to fame and fortune, this being one
of the earlier shops. The shop they owned
at the time of Kitty Hawk was purchased by Henry Ford and moved to his
Greenfield Village complex in Dearborn, Michigan). Both buildings have been restored.
Several
blocks away from the Wright Cycle Shop visitor center is the house of Paul
Laurence Dunbar, which is also a State Historic Site that was incorporated into
the park. At the far west end of Dayton
is the site of the Wright Airplane Factory, built in 1910. The structure is not open to the public and
is currently in the process of being restored.
To the south of Dayton in the
suburb of Oakwood are the Wright Aviation Center and Hawthorne Hill. The Wright Aviation Center was built to house
the 1905 Wright Flyer, the aircraft used by the brothers in their test flights
after returning to Dayton. It is located
within Carillon Historical Park, an open-air museum dedicating to preserving
historic structures and the industrial legacy of Dayton and the surrounding
area. The Wright Aviation Center also includes a replica of the original Wright Cycle Shop currently located in Dearborn, Michigan. Nearby is Hawthorne Hill, the
mansion that the Wright Brothers, along with their sister had begun building
prior to Wilbur’s death. It remained
Orville’s home for the rest of his life.
The final section of the park
lies to the northeast of Dayton, on the grounds of Wright-Patterson Air Force
Base. A second visitor center is located
next to the memorial erected to honor the brothers in the 1940s, while nearby
is Huffman Prairie, where Wilbur and Orville conducted their test flights in
the 1905 Wright Flyer. The Prairie is
essentially the world’s first airfield.
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| The Wright Cycle Shop. |
TRAVEL TIPS:
Although
Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park is spread out over the Dayton
area it is possible to visit the entire park in one day. It is recommended that visitors begin at the Cycle
Shop visitor center and then use the brochure map to take a driving tour of the
park in the order described above. The
visitor centers at Huffman Prairie and the Cycle Shop contain the same short
film on the Wrights’ activities in Dayton following the first flight at Kitty
Hawk in 1903. The different sections of
the park have differing operating days and hours, with the Cycle Shop and
Huffman Prairie visitor centers open 9am to 5pm year-round, closed on Monday
and Tuesday in winter. The Paul Laurence
Dunbar house is open from 10am to 4pm on weekends only. Visitors are recommended to use caution in the vicinity of Huffman Prairie as it is located adjacent to a shotgun range.
To
visit the Wright Aviation Center, visitors must go through the Carillon Historical
Park, for which there are entrance fees.
The Carillon Historical Park is open from 9:30am to 5pm Monday through
Saturday, and Noon to 5pm on Sundays. To
visit the Hawthorne Hill mansion, visitors must make appointments in advance.
The
visitor centers and significant historic sites are handicapped accessible. Passport stamps can be found at the visitor
centers. For those who are interested in
other aspects of aviation, it is highly recommended to visit the National
Museum of the United States Air Force at nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force
Base.
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| The memorial to the Wright Brothers near Huffman Prairie. |
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