Southern hospitality and steady winds: What made North Carolina the ‘first in flight’ choice 120 years ago

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — “It changed history!” explained Katie Edwards, the curator of Popular Culture at the North Carolina Museum of History.

“I don’t know if we’d have today the planes we have, or even the space race, so it was definitely a world-changing event that happened on our soil,” she added.

Our soil, and our sands dunes, that is. On December 17th, 1903 — 120 years ago — Orville and Wilbur Wright, two city boys from Ohio, came to a small North Carolina town that boasted only around 300 residents and made history.

But before that could happen, the Wright Brothers needed to find that right place with steady winds to even get their plane in the air. So they wrote to the Weather Bureau (now the National Weather Service) for their recommendations. While the Windy City was on that list, so was Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

“At the time, Chicago had higher average wind speed, but Chicago also had a ton of people, and that was just not going to do for these guys,” said Adair Raybon, Supervisory Park Ranger at the Wright Brothers National Memorial. “So it was a combination of isolation and our sustained winds.”

When the brothers wrote to the weather station at Kitty Hawk, the warm welcome they got back made that location a no-brainer. So away they went, setting up camp on the Outer Banks. And through every trial, the people of Kitty Hawk were happy to lend a hand, without even knowing they would be part of history.

“It was John T. Daniels who was one of the surfmen who took that famous photo on December 17th, 1903,” Edwards said. “He had never taken a photo before, yet he was the one who captured that. It was a North Carolinian who took that photo.”

The Wright Brothers were innovators since childhood, and on that day — with the help of some North Carolinians — they were children again, seeing their dream take flight.

“I think that’s the Wright Brothers story,” Raybon said. “They were geniuses, they were natural engineers, but at the same time that day, December 17th, 1903 there’s still the 14-year-old Orville there who has put this thing together and is hoping for the best.”

So as we celebrate this major turning point in our history, remember that North Carolina helped make it happen with its steady winds, and good ole’ southern hospitality.

On that day, the Wright Brothers actually did four flights, and afterwards went to eat lunch. Only after lunch did they send the telegram to their family telling of their history-making success, and then promised to be home by Christmas, which they were.

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