Gateway to the West

Tim and I have made the trip past the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, many times on our way to the farm in Kansas, but until now we've never stopped to see it up close.  However, if we are to visit all 417 National Park Service properties which is our lifetime (perhaps impossible) goal, now seemed the time to exit the interstate for a stop at this monument to the courage of the nineteenth century pioneers.

Our visit almost coincided with the date of the Arch's dedication fifty years ago.  On May 25, 1968, Vice President Hubert Humphrey dedicated the Gateway Arch to the people of St. Louis and the nation.  In an article published the next day, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that "a continuous, frequently heavy rain which began in the early daylight hours soaked the memorial grounds where the ceremony was to have been held and forced its removal to the underground Visitors Center beneath the Arch.  Several hundred persons witnessed the event, only a fraction of the thousands expected if the weather had been better."

Recognized in 1967 by the American Society of Civil Engineers as an outstanding civil engineering achievement, the Arch is a marvel, a testament to the technology of the mid-twentieth century.

Several times a day the documentary film about its construction plays in the underground theater of the visitors' center.  Did you know that the arch is taller than the Washington Monument?  Or that if the wind is very gusty, the top of the tower could sway 18 inches.  When the two towers were finally tall enough for the capstone to be set in place, it had to be done when on a cold day because the 900 tons of stainless steel expands in heat and the towers were built so precisely that it was a tight fit.  In fact, they had to cool the towers by spraying them with water so they could insert the capstone.

Once the capstone was set in place, the towers stabilized and as Leonardo da Vinci said:  "An arch consists of two weaknesses which, leaning one against the other, make a strength."

A poster from the Gateway Arch gift shop

Watching the nonchalance of the men who so casually stepped along the struts high in the sky filled me with anxiety.  I could barely watch the documentary to its end for fear someone would fall.  However, not a single life was lost during its construction.

A close look at the frieze inside the visitors' center reveals the joining of the Arch's two towers. 

Its completion was proof that the mathematical equation posited by its architect, Eero Saarien, could create the catenary curve of the Arch, a shape that if turned upside-down would appear to hang freely from two points.

There are north and south ramp entrances to the tram.   

After watching the film, I lacked the courage to ride the tram to the top.  Thoughts of how such a conveyance could even fit inside the triangular walls of the archway made me claustrophobic.  And when the ranger told me that the tram cars are called capsules, forget about it!  I'm not setting one foot inside them!  However, if you are brave, you could take a tram from either the north tower or the south all the way to the top.  There you can look out over the city through peepholes measuring 7" by 27" before climbing back into your tram for the reverse trip back down the same tower.

Instead, I preferred to admire the Arch from the ground level.

Watching it gleam in the sunlight tempted me to try to photograph its splendor from several angles.

Its graceful curve looked like a dangling jumprope turned upside down.

Yet, none of my photographs captured the sheer audacity of Eero Saarien's conception.  Tracy Campbell writes in his book, The Gateway Arch: A Biography:

"Let us hope that the Arch somehow survives--that it becomes, far in the future, a mysterious structure like the Great Pyramids or Stonehenge, that leads onlookers to wonder about the people who produced it and ask themselves what strange compulsions led to its creation."

Ha!  I think it's here to stay, Tim!

National Museum of the Air Force

National Museum of the Air Force

Tim and I followed the Aviation Trail while we were in Dayton, Ohio.  We didn't have time to tour all ten of the historic sites so we concentrated on those that were related to the Wright Brothers.  In one hectic day, we visited the Wright Cycle Shop, saw their 1903 Flyer at Carillon Historic Park, toured their trophy home at Hawthorn Hill, stopped by their graves in Woodland Cemetery and scouted out Huffman Prairie airfield where they flew their Flyer II.  The next day we spent at the National Museum of the Air Force before information overload and sore feet forced us to leave.  We agreed that this museum deserved several days to do it justice, days we did not have at our disposal.

The Wright Brothers' 1909 Military Flyer

Four large hangers house airplanes displaying military aviation history from its inception through the NASA missions.  Just think how it all began with the Wright Brothers' 1909 Military Flyer, the plane the Wrights finally convinced the U.S. War Department to buy.  In 1908 the U.S. Signal Corps sought to purchase a two-man observation airplane.  The Wrights entered the competition at Fort Myers, Virginia.  Concerned that a fatal crash would devastate their family, Wilbur and Orville never flew together.  That was a wise decision.  On September 3, 1908, Orville took off with Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge as the observer.  The plane crashed, killing Selfridge and severely injuring Orville.  But what the Wrights learned that day they incorporated into their 1909 Flyer and returned to the trials on June 3, 1909.  That was the winning airplane which the Signal Corps purchased from the Wrights for $30,000 and the start of military aviation.

Tim and I followed a tour guide through the hanger devoted to World War I and II aircraft.  Even though I'm not much of an airplane fanatic, three planes caught my attention: the Flying Tiger, the B-25 bomber flown in the Doolittle raids and the B-29 Bockscar that dropped the "Fat Boy" atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

One of WWII's P-40 Fighting Tigers

The P-40 was the United States' best fighter plane at the onset of World War II.  Most notably, these planes were flown by the 1st American Volunteer Group, the famed Fighting Tigers commanded by Lt. Gen. Claire Lee Chennault during 1942.  The crews of these 99 airplanes, painted with their menacing shark-mouth design, tallied an amazing combat record, downing 297 enemy planes over Burma, Thailand and China in seven months of operations.  Because they were civilian volunteers, the rules of war did not apply to them.  If they were captured by Japanese forces, crew members could have been executed as spies.  By keeping Japan's focus on Asia, these brave Fighting Tigers earned the United States valuable time to gear up a wartime economy that churned out tanks, aircraft and ships during World War II.

The B-25 bomber used by Lt Col Jimmy Doolittle on the Tokyo Raid on April 18, 1942.

The Doolittle Raid was a daring bombing mission that on occurred April 18, 1942 just four months after Pearl Harbor.  Eighty volunteer airmen flying sixteen B-25 bombers led by the legendary Lt. Col. James H. "Jimmy" Doolittle took off from the USS Hornet aircraft carrier in the early hours before dawn.  Their mission?  To strike back at Japan, bombing military targets in five Japanese cities in retaliation for the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Japanese Navy on December 7, 1941.  After dropping their bombs, the pilots were to continue on to China where they were to land, but fifteen planes crashed in bad weather.  The sixteenth landed in the Soviet Union; its crew was held for more than a year before their release.  Of the 80 raiders, three were killed in action.  Eight were captured, three of those captives were later executed while one starved to death in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.  The rest made their way back to the United States or to American forces.  The dangerous mission proved that Japan was vulnerable and gave Americans a tremendous boost in morale.

The Doolittle Raiders' Goblets

In December 1946 Doolittle and his raiders gathered to celebrate his birthday and raised a glass to toast those of their number who had died.  They continued to hold reunions annually.  At the reunion in 1959, the city of Tucson, Arizona, presented the Raiders with a set of sterling silver goblets, each inscribed with the name of one of the 80 men who flew on that mission.  At subsequent reunions, the roll of the raiders was called and a toast was made to those who had died.  The goblets of deceased members were overturned in the glass carrying case until the final survivor, 101-year-old Lt. Col. Richard E. Cole (Doolittle's co-pilot) in a private ceremony on April 18, 2017 at the National Museum of the Air Force, turned over the goblet of next-to-the-last survivor, 94-year-old Staff Sargent David J. Thatcher, and made the final toast to the Doolittle Raiders.

Also on display at the museum is the B-29 "Bockscar", the airplane that dropped the atomic "Fat Bomb" on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.  But that was not their original objective.  Dense clouds and drifting smoke from fires touched off by the previous day's bombing prevented them from releasing the atomic bomb on the city of Kokura.  Pilot Major Charles Sweeney and his crew circled the city for fifty minutes as they looked for the munitions plant there, one of the largest in Japan.  Running low on fuel and with Japanese anti-aircraft closing in, the crew aboard the Bockscar decided to head for the secondary target, Nagasaki, and over the city's industrial area, they released the Fat Boy.  Over the next four months, 80,000 people died, roughly half of them on the first day of the bombing.

Our World War II tour ran too long for us to catch the one about the Korean War in the next hanger.  I wish I could have heard the guide there.  During the Korean War, my dad served as a fixed wing  and helicopter mechanic.  It would have been interesting to see the aircraft he might have worked on.

We did make it to the final hanger in time to join the tour of the space age aircraft.

This final tour ended at the Presidential Gallery where aircraft used by U.S. Presidents were on display.  They included the "Sacred Cow" with its special elevator for hoisting President Franklin Roosevelt in his wheelchair into the plane's cabin and the Boeing Air Force One (shown below) which carried the body of President John F. Kennedy back to Washington, D.C. after his assassination.

Perhaps someday I can bring my father here.  He would love this place.

The Wright Stuff

First flight of the Flyer 1, December 17, 1903, Orville piloting, Wilbur running at wingtip / Library of Congress / Public  Domain

“What had transpired that day in 1903, in the stiff winds and cold of the Outer Banks in less than two hours time, was one of the turning points in history, the beginning of change for the world far greater than any of those present could possibly have imagined. With their homemade machine, Wilbur and Orville Wright had shown without a doubt that man could fly and if the world did not yet know it, they did. Their flights that morning were the first ever in which a piloted machine took off under its own power into the air in full flight, sailed forward with no loss of speed, and landed at a point as high as that from which it started.” ~ David McCullough, The Wright Brothers

Tim and I like to listen to audiobooks when driving long distances.  The Wright Brothers by David McCullough was one of the first we heard after we began our life on the road.  Their feat on that fateful day of December 17, 1903 changed the world forever and ushered us into the space age.  When we finished the book, we vowed that one day we'd visit the Wrights' bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio and the dunes at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina where their efforts came to fruition.  We stopped at Kitty Hawk a year ago in April 2017; now, as we head west on Interstate 70 towards the farm in Kansas, we stopped at Dayton for two days.  That was hardly enough time to follow Dayton's Aviation Trail to the ten historical sites located in this city and nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base so we hit the highlights as best we could.  Our first stop was the Wright Cycle Shop near the center of Dayton.

The Wright Cycle Shop

“The bicycle was proclaimed a boon to all mankind, a thing of beauty, good for the spirits, good for health and vitality, indeed one’s whole outlook on life. Doctors enthusiastically approved. One Philadelphia physician, writing in The American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children, concluded from his observations that “for physical exercise for both men and women, the bicycle is one of the greatest inventions of the nineteenth century.” ~ David McCullough, The Wright Brothers

Showroom of the Wright Cycle Shop

Wilbur and Orville had a reputation in their neighborhood for being able to fix anything.  Swept up in the cycling craze at the turn of the 20th century, neighbors sought them out to fix a broken bicycle chain or to straighten a wobbly bike tire.  The brothers decided to capitalize on their mechanical skills by moving their flourishing printing press business at number 1127 West Third Street upstairs and opening a bicycle repair shop on the ground floor.

The least expensive bicycle Wilbur and Orville sold in 1895 cost $50, an expensive purchase at a time when wages for day laborers were less than $2000 per year.   But the Wrights gave their customers every chance to own one, offering installment plans and credit for trade-ins.

“Wilbur would remark that if he were to give a young man advice on how to get ahead in life, he would say, “Pick out a good father and mother, and begin life in Ohio.” ~ David McCullough, The Wright Brothers

Perhaps it was the flying toy brought home by Bishop, their itinerate preacher father, that first sparked the boys' interest in trying to solve the age-old question of whether man could ever fly.  Whatever the impetus was, it prompted Wilbur to write to the Smithsonian to ask for any papers regarding flight which the brothers avidly studied.

As bicyclists, Wilbur and Orville knew that in order to maintain balance on a bicycle in motion, one needed to be able to control it.  Turning a bicycle, for example, one needed to turn the handlebars (yaw) and lean in the direction one wanted to go (roll).  They intuitively realized that a flying machine would have similar requirements and that insight helped them unlock the secret of flight.  Eager to try their first prototype, they boxed up their work to transport it to the Outer Banks where the winds, the soft sands and the isolation from newspaper reporters would prove to be a good location to test their flyers.  Four different times they made the trip during the winter off-season, each time with a more refined machine until finally their 1903 Flyer soared with Orville aboard.

1901 glider flown by Wilbur (left) and Orville / Library of Congress / Public Domain

"It wasn't luck that made them fly; it was hard work and common sense; they put their whole heart and soul and all their energy into an idea and they had the faith." ~ John T. Daniels, eyewitness at Kill Devil Hills

The U. S. Patent Office assigned patent No. 821,393 to the Wright brothers for their flying machine.  The Smithsonian, however, did not agree that the Wrights were the first to discover flight.  Instead, having granted $20,000 (another $50,000 was given by the War Department) to Smithsonian secretary Samuel Langley, the Smithsonian claimed that, despite two failed attempts when Langley's flying machines dropped like a rock into the Potomac, he was the father of flight, a claim that Orville Wright disputed until the Smithsonian retracted its opinion in 1942.

“Not incidentally, the Langley project had cost nearly $70,000, the greater part of it public money, whereas the brothers’ total expenses for everything from 1900 to 1903, including materials and travel to and from Kitty Hawk, came to a little less than $1,000, a sum paid entirely from the modest profits of their bicycle business.” ~ David McCullough, The Wright Brothers

Huffman Prairie

In 1904 the Wrights built the Flyer II.  Deciding to forego the costs of the lengthy trip to Kitty Hawk, they set up an airfield at Huffman Prairie eight miles northeast of Dayton (which Tim and I found after venturing down a obscure tree-canopied, single-lane dirt road) and for the first time invited reporters to view their flying machine on its trial run, a flight that was less than stellar due to engine troubles and slack winds.  So reporters turned their attention elsewhere, thus, giving the brothers the anonymity they needed to improve their machine while their competitors grabbed the spotlight.

“In no way did any of this discourage or deter Wilbur and Orville Wright, any more than the fact that they had had no college education, no formal technical training, no experience working with anyone other than themselves, no friends in high places, no financial backers, no government subsidies, and little money of their own.” ~ David McCullough, The Wright Brothers

When the brothers were finally ready to market their machine, few believed their claim that it would fly.  The U.S. War Department snubbed them.  Only the French military expressed an interest so once again, they boxed up their machine and Wilbur took it to France.  During his first public performance there, he was aloft for only one minute and 45 seconds, but his ability to make turns and circle the airfield in figure eights thrilled the crowd.

By the end of 1909 the Wright brothers were world famous and very wealthy.  Their sister Katherine who had endlessly encouraged their pursuit now recommended they build a new home where they could entertain the many notable people, including Charles Lindbergh, who came to visit them.  However, Wilbur died at age forty-five of typhoid fever only a few months before Orville, their father Bishop and Katherine moved into the home on Hawthorn Street.

“Of the immediate family of 7 Hawthorn Street, only Bishop Wright had yet to fly. Nor had anyone of his age ever flown anywhere on earth. He had been with the brothers from the start, helping in every way he could, never losing faith in them or their aspirations. Now, at eighty-two, with the crowd cheering, he walked out to the starting point, where Orville, without hesitation, asked him to climb aboard. They took off, soaring over Huffman Prairie at about 350 feet for a good six minutes, during which the Bishop’s only words were, “Higher, Orville, higher!” ~ David McCullough, The Wright Brothers

Hawthorn Hill

Hawthorn Hill became a gathering place for the Wright family.  When we visited Hawthorn Hill, our tour guide showed us family movie clips of holiday dinners and sledding occasions when nieces and nephews flew down the backyard hill.  We also learned that Orville, although shy in public, loved practical jokes and once surprised a dinner guest with a fake cockroach that he surreptitiously pulled from underneath the guest's plate across the table.  Orville suffered back pain, the result of a 1908 crash of their airplane.  The carpet underneath his desk chair is still worn from the way he shuffled his feet to relieve his sciatic pain while seated.

From upper left, clockwise: sleds, armchair with bookstand invention, central vacuum,  shower jets

He installed jets in his shower, a central vacuum throughout the house and a call system to summoned the housekeeper, all evidence of his life-long love of mechanical innovations.  He set up a laboratory near the old bicycle shop and continued to go there each day for several hours.  Some believe he carried on an affair there with his secretary Mabel Beck who is suspected of encouraging his estrangement from his sister after Katherine married in 1926.

The Wrights (Wilbur, Katherine, Orville and their parents) are buried in Dayton's Woodland Cemetery.

It was only as Katherine lay on her deathbed that Orville laid aside his feelings of abandonment and hastened to her side.

Following Orville's express wishes, the 1905 Flyer is displayed at Dayton's Carillon Historical Park so visitors may see it from above.

Meanwhile, the controversy between Orville and the Smithsonian continued to rage.  In 1925 Orville announced that he would send the 1903 Flyer to the Kensington Science Museum in England unless the Smithsonian recanted its conclusion that Langley, not the Wright brothers, was the first to master flight.  The Smithsonian did not revise its stance so Orville packed up the plane and shipped it to England where it remained until 1942 when the Smithsonian finally withdrew its claim.  Of course, by then England was fighting the Nazis making it impossible to ship the Flyer to back to the States.  When the war ended, the Flyer came home to the Smithsonian in 1948, just a few months after Orville died.

Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright seated on steps of rear porch, 7 Hawthorne St., Dayton, Ohio, 1909 / Library of Congress / Public Domain

“On July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong, another American born and raised in western Ohio, stepped onto the moon, he carried with him, in tribute to the Wright brothers, a small swatch of the muslin from a wing of their 1903 Flyer.” ~ David McCullough, The Wright Brothers

The GAP

No, I'm not going to write about the popular clothing and accessories retailer.  GAP is an acronym for the Great Allegheny Passage, a spectacular rail-trail that runs more than 150 miles from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Cumberland, Maryland.

Someday I'd like to bike this route that runs right past the campground where we stayed near Confluence, Pennsylvania, the Outflow Camping Area.

Confluence is about two-thirds of the way south on the GAP from Pittsburgh towards Cumberland.

Built on the banks where the Casselman and Youghiogheny rivers join, Confluence is a village with a bicycle repair shop and several bed-and-breakfast establishments that cater to the cycling crowd.

There's also a lovely Methodist church with beautiful stained glass windows where this past Sunday we celebrated The Day of Pentecost, the day the Holy Spirit descended upon the early followers of Christ.

Tim and I, along with a friendly cat, explored the GAP for a little ways, but we didn't have time to cover much more than a few of its miles.  Still, we've talked about this expedition since we've lived in D.C.

Someday we'd like to ride the Capitol Limited Amtrak train to Pittsburgh; then, pick up the trail there and cycle to Cumberland where the GAP intersects with the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal trail.

Hopping onto the C & O, we could bike its 184.5 towpath all the way to Washington, D.C.  I think if we could break the journey down to 30-50 miles a day, I could possibly handle it.  I'd certainly like to try!

To that end, I'm filing the trail maps for the GAP and the C & O Canal away in my Bucket List folder.

Falling for Fallingwater

When planning our way west through Pennsylvania back to the farm, I picked the small town of Confluence for our home base because it is close to several sights Tim and I wished to see:  the Flight 93 Memorial, the Allegheny Portage Rail, the Johnstown Flood and Fort Necessity.  In addition, there are Fallingwater and the Great Allegheny Passage.  More about that last attraction later, but for now let me just say that I fell in love with Fallingwater.

Edgar & Liliane Kaufmann with their son Edgar jr.
Photo courtesy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Fallingwater was the summer home of Edgar and Liliane Kaufmann and their only child, Edgar Kaufmann jr.  In 1916, Edgar J. Kaufmann, owner of the Pittsburgh department store bearing his name, leased the property with plans to develop a camp where his employees could escape the heavily-polluted city.

Snapshot from a wall display at Fallingwater Visitor Center

Camp Kaufmann became a popular retreat where visitors could enjoy tennis, swimming, volleyball, hiking, hayrides, picnicking, sunbathing, singing and reading.

Snapshots of bathers frolicking under the Bear Run falls were published in The Storagram, Kaufmann's Department Store's newsletter.  The camp accommodated nearly a third of Kaufmann's 3,000 employees each summer.  Needless to say, the prospect of a seven-dollars-per-week vacation every third year was a genius moral-booster for the company.

The Kaufmann's Department Store formally purchased the property in 1926.  Once only an occasional visitor, Edgar Kaufmann began to spend summers swimming, lunching and playing tennis with his employees.

In July 1933, the land's ownership was transferred to the Kaufmann family, the beginning of Edgar's plans to build a summer home there.

In the summer of 1933, Edgar Kaufmann jr., began an apprenticeship at Taliesan, Frank Lloyd Wright's communal program for architect students in Wisconsin, and introduced his parents to the noted architect.

For the sum of $8,000 (almost a third of the proposed construction cost), the Kaufmanns hired Wright to develop plans to build Fallingwater over the Bear Run falls.  However, before the home was completed, the construction costs soared to $150,000.  That's a lot of money for a summer home that the Kaufmanns used only a few weeks out of the year.

Liliane & Edgar Kaufmann
Photo courtesy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

After his mother's death in 1952 and then his father's death in the 1955, Edgar jr. rarely visited the property.  Concerned about Fallingwater's preservation and following his father's wishes, Edgar jr.  entrusted Fallingwater and approximately 1,500 acres of the land that surrounds it to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.

When we visited, our tour guide mentioned that it takes $4 million a year to maintain this home situated on top of Bear Run falls with all the issues of damp and water damage.

But I think it's worth it.  Just ask any of the 4.5 million visitors who have come to Fallingwater since it opened to the public in 1964.  I'm sure they'd say the same.