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Wright Brothers National Memorial
The Wright Brothers National Memorial memorializes Orville and Wilbur Wright and their invention of powered manned flight on December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk.
The memorial encompasses 26 acres and includes a 60-foot pylon atop the 90-foot Kill Devil Hill, a visitors center and a pavilion, and a 3,000-foot airstrip for small planes.
The Wrights conducted their experiments with gliders from atop Kill Devil Hill and launched their powered flying machine from a rail below the hill.
A road circles the grounds and there is parking closer to the monument, but the park is easily walkable via paved sidewalks that circle the centerpiece dune and go up it from several points.
Sites to see outdoors include a granite boulder marking where the first powered flight took off and markers indicating where the day’s flights landed, from the first at 120 feet to the fourth, which soared a total of 852 feet in 59 seconds.
There’s also a reconstructed 1903 hangar and a reconstructed crew quarters/workshop next to the flight path.
Exhibits and artifacts in the visitors center explain the research, engineering and testing that preceded the Wright Brothers’ first flights. The center also houses a replica of a Wright glider (the original Wright Flyer powered craft is in the Smithsonian).
A blown-up version of the iconic photo from the historic morning greets visitors to the museum.
Here’s a look at the grounds from the memorial, with the original flight path at the end of the sidewalk, the hangar and crew quarters to the right and the visitors center farther to the right.
For the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ flights, the Park Service opened a pavilion with additional exhibits about the history of flight after the Wright Brothers, including a reminder (below) that it only took 66 years for manned flight to reach the moon, and a free film.
Also as part of the 100th anniversary celebration, Steven H. Smith’s life-size sculpture of the first flight was unveiled.
The National Park Service brochure points out that in addition to sand spurs and prickly pear cactus on the grounds at the Wright Brothers memorial, visitors should “be aware that Kill Devil Hill is highly exposed to lightning.”
The Wright Brothers National Memorial is on N.C. 12 at Kill Devil Hills on the Outer Banks between mileposts 7 and 8.
Admission to the Wright Brothers National Memorial is $4 for ages 16 and older, and the ticket is good for seven days. An annual pass costs $20.
The Wright Brothers memorial is among several outdoors sites of interest on the Outer Banks, including the National Park Service’s Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, Jockey’s Ridge State Park, the Coastal N.C. National Wildlife Refuges Gateway Visitor Center, the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge and the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge.
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