His pilot, Henri Pequet, would fly just over 8 miles from Allahabad to Naini to deliver 6,500 letters. Windham used the event to generate publicity and raise money for charity. The next day, a large exhibition orchestrated by Sir Walter George Windham in British India made the first official airmail flight. The Wright brothers made the first flight in 1903, and it wasn’t long before pilots adopted air transport for mail delivery.īy 1911, Fred Wiseman had conducted an unofficial airmail flight carrying three letters from Petaluma to Santa Rosa, California. * Early Aviation & Airmail vintage airmail advertisement Intermediate Field with tower in Nebraska It was not until the invention of the airplane that intercontinental mail delivery witnessed its next major breakthrough. In the late 19th century, reliability of mail delivery improved – but not its speed. When the transcontinental telegraph line was completed in 1861, it immediately rendered the Pony Express obsolete. Higher costs and poor economies of scale would see the Pony Express fail to win the mail contract beyond its first year of operation.Ī year later, the threat of civil war descended upon the country and resources were diverted to the conflict. Knowledgeable frontiersmen would race across the country on horseback, covering vast distances in shorter times. While the Pony Express was significant in that it proved the northern/central mail route was possible, it was inefficient compared to stagecoach lines. Nearly unheard-of at the time, this was faster than the more volatile southern route favored by others. Airmail beacon in Omaha, Nebraska (circa 1920s)īy 1860, the Pony Express revolutionized transcontinental mail by offering delivery in about ten days. The trip across the country was arduous, dangerous, and could take anywhere from three to six weeks. Understandably, coast-to-coast message delivery was nonexistent. It was not until a gold discovery in 1848 that California became the destination for tens of thousands from the east. There was no infrastructure and very little law governing the land. In the mid-19th century the Wild West was largely unexplored. * Early Airmail Beacon Route Map circa 1924. When radar and radio communications made the beacons obsolete years later, most were torn down or abandoned. Before long, a system of beacons was established across the United States to guide airmail pilots around-the-clock.
This solution worked for flight during the day, but grounded pilots at night. In a era before radar, pilots used ground-based landmarks for guidance. The purpose was important: helping early pilots navigate U.S. The shape and direction of the arrows vary, but it is clear they served the same purpose. Many are in good condition while others have succumbed to nature. Some will be accompanied by a small shack, a few have a metal tower affixed to their base.
They are often found in remote locations or areas difficult to access. Oh the stories these forgotten slabs have seen transpire.Scattered across the United States are a network of mysterious concrete arrows. So they did what they could with what they had, and by all reports, it was deemed highly successful by the standards of the day.īut imagine if you will, flying alone in a twine engine biplane, searching for one of these across the barren plains of Nevada, or among the treacherous passes through the Rockies. It seems absurd today, given than radio navigation beacons were less than a decade away–but they didn’t know what at the time. It’s the kind of system that calls into doubt the sort of prognostication we often attempt in scifi.
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The system would have been immediately understood by any engineer in ancient Rome: Some 1,500 concrete arrows pointing the way, generator shacks and fifty-foot towers by which rotating beacon lights helped pilots find the markers, and flashing lights identified each marker by number using Morse code. In the 1920s, the US government built a coast-to-coast system of navigational aides to help airplanes deliver airmail day and night, in good weather and bad, across a vast, sparsely inhabited interior without benefit of radio or radar. Directional marker of the US Transcontinental Airway System
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