Atchison's Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum 4th in USA Today Reader's Choice Travel Awards

Atchison's Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum was announced Friday as having finished fourth in an online vote to identify the nation's "Best New Museum."

USA Today late that morning revealed the top 10 finishers among the 16 competitors in that category in its 2024 Reader's Choice Travel Awards.

First, second and third places were won, respectively, by the Gettysburg Beyond the Battle Museum in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; Buffalo AKG Art Museum in Buffalo, New York; and the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas.

Public plea focused on the value of national attention

The Earhart Museum was the only museum in the Midwest among those on the ballot, said its director, Mindi Love Pendergraft.

The Earhart Museum was in fourth place in the voting when Love Pendergraft asked residents in a Dec. 14 news release to help it finish first by voting online in favor of it daily until the contest ended at 11 a.m. CST Dec. 25.

Members of the public were able to vote each day on every device they possessed.

Finishing first would focus valuable national attention on the Earhart Museum, Love Pendergraft said.

What is the Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum?

The Earhart Museum opened last April at Amelia Earhart Memorial Airport, 1 mile west of Atchison at 16701 286th Road.

The $17 million museum was financed using donations from supporters that include NASA and corporate powerhouses Boeing, Bombardier, FedEx, Garmin and Lockheed Martin.

The museum's centerpiece is the only remaining Lockheed Electra 10-E, which was the type of plane being flown at the time of her disappearance by Earhart, a trailblazing female pilot from Atchison.

The plane is named "Muriel," after Earhart's sister, Grace Muriel Earhart Morrissey, who died in 1998 at age 98.

The museum celebrates the legacy of Earhart, whose accomplishments include being the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to the U.S. mainland and the first woman to fly nonstop across the U.S.

Earhart, accompanied by navigator Fred Noonan, then attempted to fly around the world.

The trip was more than three-quarters complete when they vanished July 2, 1937, as they looked for a landing strip the U.S. government built for them on a small, U.S.-owned island in the South Pacific.

The fate of Earhart and Noonan remains one of the world's great unsolved mysteries.

The most commonly held theory is that Earhart, being unable to see the island, ran out of gas and ditched her plane at sea, where she and Noonan died.

Earhart's birthplace and childhood home at 223 N. Terrace in Atchison is the site of a separate tourist attraction, the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum.

Contact Tim Hrenchir at threnchir@gannett.com or 785-213-5934.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Amelia Earhart museum takes fourth in USA Today travel awards vote