Aviation-Themed Options for National Park Week
Several Park Units Celebrate America’s Aviation Heritage
"National parks are the best idea we ever had – they reflect us at our best rather than our worst."
So wrote the author and historian Wallace Stegner in 1983.
This National Park Week (Aug. 22-30) there is no better way to celebrate America’s “best idea” than by a visit to a National Park unit that celebrates America’s aviation heritage.
Our recommended flight path to parks with a soaring spirit begins appropriately with the Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Visitors can climb Big Kill Devil Hill to see the nation’s monument commemorating the Wright brothers’ historic flight, examine a replica of the 1903 Wright Flyer, and explore reproductions of the brothers’ 1903 camp buildings.
To soak up more knowledge about the Wright brothers, make a trek to the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park in Ohio. The park’s attractions include the Wright Cycle Company complex, the Wright Company Factory—America’s first airplane factory and school—and Huffman Prairie Flying Field, where the Wright brothers tested new versions of their flyer.
Relive the “golden age of aviation” at Floyd Bennett Field in the Gateway Recreation Area on Jamaica Bay, New York. The park’s visitor center was the air terminal for New York City’s first municipal airport and contains photos and newsreels from the airfield’s heyday, when aviators such as Amelia Earhart and Wiley Post took off and landed there.
Commemorate the day that will live in infamy at the Pearl Harbor National Memorial in Honolulu, Hawaii. The site contains memorials to the USS Arizona, Oklahoma, Utah and Missouri (where the Japanese surrendered to the allied forces in 1945) plus the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum.
Glide into aviation history at the Torrey Pines Gliderport, the setting in San Diego for innovative tests of motorless flight vehicles beginning in 1930. Among the aviation pioneers who flew at Torrey Pines was Charles Lindbergh.
Visit Crissy Field in San Francisco’s Golden Gate National Recreation Area, where the first dawn-to-dusk transcontinental flight ended in 1924. Crissy Field, a U.S. Army facility, was also the takeoff point for the first western aerial forest-fire patrols.
Celebrate the Space Age at the John F. Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral, Florida. Among the NASA buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places are the Operations and Checkout Building, the Missile Crawler Transporter Facilities, the Crawlerway, the Vehicle Assembly Building, the Launch Control Center and Launch Complex 39.
Honor the heroes of United Airlines Flight 93 at the National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The memorial to the 40 passengers and flight crew members who fought valiantly to prevent the fourth hijacked airplane from crashing into either the White House or Capitol Building on 9/11 contains a 93-foot tall “Tower of Voices” with wind chimes commemorating the valor of the victims.
It’s worth noting that the National Park Service not only celebrates flight, but maintains an active fleet of airplanes, seaplanes, drones and helicopters to conduct wildland fire, law enforcement, search and rescue and cultural and natural resource management missions. The bond between aviation and our national parks is indeed another great idea worth celebrating.
Throughout the year, we will continue to recognize America's aviation heroes and heritage in celebration of America’s 250th anniversary and highlight great aviation milestones as we look forward to aviation's promising future.