Monument to a Century of Flight

Written By: Gail Clifford | Published By: Weekend Notes| May 11, 2022

https://www.weekendnotes.com/monument-to-a-century-of-flight/

“Where Dreams Still Take Flight” – Dare County Tourism Board 2003

It’s the shoulder season in the Outer Banks, North Carolina, that time of year when you can have blissful, delightful weather or typhoon like conditions. Today’s arrival came with high tide coastal warnings and rough Atlantic seas proving their majesty as they threw the sand dunes about. The wailing winds, strong enough to shake the stilted cottage we’re staying in, proved an excellent foil to this land of flight.

For land of flight, it is home to the famous Wright Brothers and the beatific Kitty Hawk, with proof of celebration of humanity’s soaring spirit memorialized in the Visitor Center and Rest Stop not far from the bridge that leads you to these barrier islands.

The Monument to a Century of Flight, dedicated on November 8, 2003, created by architect Benjamin B. Cahoon and artists Glenn Eure, Hanna Jubran, and Jodi Hollnagel Jubran stands like a steel Stonehenge, shaped like an airplane’s rudder to lead us into the next century.

These fourteen stainless steel wing-shaped pylons vary in height and orbit 120 feet, a little longer than your mobile phone’s panorama capacity, commemorating the distance flown by brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright on December 17, 1903.

Written upon each pylon are landmark events, from the Wright Brothers first sustained, controlled flight in “heavier than air machine,” 1910 Madame La Baronne de Laroche becoming the first woman pilot licensed, 1923 in-flight refueling introduced, 1927 Charles Lindbergh’s solo trans-Atlantic flight, 1942 introduction of ejection seats, 1947’s breaking of the sound barrier by Chuck Yeager, 1957 Sputnik, and the space race and ongoing exploration.