Vacation: Day 3
Jun. 7th, 2009 01:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rosieknightSo far we've visited the Wright Memorial at Kill Devil Hill.
But wait! Didn't the Wright Brothers take their famous first flights at Kitty Hawk?
The answer is both yes and no.
In 1903, the nearest town to the site the Wright brothers planned to use for testing their airplane was Kitty Hawk. The location itself was Kill Devil Hill. It was - at the time - giant sand dune with a field of sand surrounding it.
On that sandy apron, the Wright brothers made their four historic flights. The last and longest of which took 59 seconds to complete. (The first three were each about 12 seconds long.)
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Kill Devil Hill today is covered with grasses, wild flowers, and some prickly pear cacti, planted to keep the sand dune from blowing away. It's crowned with the Wright Brothers' Memorial, pictures to come later.
Down at the base, several yards away from the hill, stones mark the sites of Wrights' flights. Nearby sits a recreation of their base camp. A bit beyond that is the Airfield museum with a full sized model of a Wright Flier. (The only surviving original is in Dayton, Ohio, but even that is a later make than the original airplane.)
And that's basically the Wright Memorial at Kill Devil Hill.
But wait! Didn't the Wright Brothers take their famous first flights at Kitty Hawk?
The answer is both yes and no.
In 1903, the nearest town to the site the Wright brothers planned to use for testing their airplane was Kitty Hawk. The location itself was Kill Devil Hill. It was - at the time - giant sand dune with a field of sand surrounding it.
On that sandy apron, the Wright brothers made their four historic flights. The last and longest of which took 59 seconds to complete. (The first three were each about 12 seconds long.)
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Kill Devil Hill today is covered with grasses, wild flowers, and some prickly pear cacti, planted to keep the sand dune from blowing away. It's crowned with the Wright Brothers' Memorial, pictures to come later.
Down at the base, several yards away from the hill, stones mark the sites of Wrights' flights. Nearby sits a recreation of their base camp. A bit beyond that is the Airfield museum with a full sized model of a Wright Flier. (The only surviving original is in Dayton, Ohio, but even that is a later make than the original airplane.)
And that's basically the Wright Memorial at Kill Devil Hill.
