PrairieSpyder
08-25-2013, 01:54 PM
Giant Concrete Arrows That Point Your Way Across America ...
Every so often, usually in the vast deserts of the
American Southwest, a hiker or a backpacker will
run across something puzzling: a large concrete
arrow, as much as seventy feet in length, sitting
in the middle of scrub-covered nowhere.
What are these giant arrows? Some kind of surveying mark?
Landing beacons for flying saucers? Earth's turn signals?
No, it's...
The Transcontinental Air Mail Route .
74598
On August 20, 1920, the United States opened its first
coast-to-coast airmail delivery route, just 60 years after
the Pony Express closed up shop. There were no good
aviation charts in those days, so pilots had to eyeball
their way across the country using landmarks. This
meant that flying in bad weather was difficult, and night
flying was just about impossible. The Postal Service
solved the problem with the world's first ground-based
civilian navigation system: a series of lit beacons that
would extend from New York to San Francisco . Every
ten miles, pilots would pass a bright yellow concrete
arrow. Each arrow would be surmounted by a 51-foot
steel tower and lit by a million-candlepower rotating
beacon. (A generator shed at the tail of each arrow
powered the beacon.)
74599
Now mail could get from the Atlantic to the Pacific not in a
matter of weeks, but in just 30 hours or so. Even the dumbest
of air mail pilots, it seems, could follow a series of bright
yellow arrows straight out of a Tex Avery cartoon. By 1929 it spanned the continent uninterrupted, the envy of postal
systems worldwide.
Radio and radar are, of course, infinitely less cool than a
concrete Yellow Brick Road from sea to shining sea, but I
think we all know how this story ends. New advances in communication and navigation technology made the big
arrows obsolete, and the Commerce Department
decommissioned the beacons in the 1940s. The steel
towers were torn down and went to the war effort. But the
hundreds of arrows remain. Their yellow paint is gone,
their concrete cracks a little more with every winter frost,
and no one crosses their path much, except for coyotes
and tumbleweeds. But they're still out there.
Every so often, usually in the vast deserts of the
American Southwest, a hiker or a backpacker will
run across something puzzling: a large concrete
arrow, as much as seventy feet in length, sitting
in the middle of scrub-covered nowhere.
What are these giant arrows? Some kind of surveying mark?
Landing beacons for flying saucers? Earth's turn signals?
No, it's...
The Transcontinental Air Mail Route .
74598
On August 20, 1920, the United States opened its first
coast-to-coast airmail delivery route, just 60 years after
the Pony Express closed up shop. There were no good
aviation charts in those days, so pilots had to eyeball
their way across the country using landmarks. This
meant that flying in bad weather was difficult, and night
flying was just about impossible. The Postal Service
solved the problem with the world's first ground-based
civilian navigation system: a series of lit beacons that
would extend from New York to San Francisco . Every
ten miles, pilots would pass a bright yellow concrete
arrow. Each arrow would be surmounted by a 51-foot
steel tower and lit by a million-candlepower rotating
beacon. (A generator shed at the tail of each arrow
powered the beacon.)
74599
Now mail could get from the Atlantic to the Pacific not in a
matter of weeks, but in just 30 hours or so. Even the dumbest
of air mail pilots, it seems, could follow a series of bright
yellow arrows straight out of a Tex Avery cartoon. By 1929 it spanned the continent uninterrupted, the envy of postal
systems worldwide.
Radio and radar are, of course, infinitely less cool than a
concrete Yellow Brick Road from sea to shining sea, but I
think we all know how this story ends. New advances in communication and navigation technology made the big
arrows obsolete, and the Commerce Department
decommissioned the beacons in the 1940s. The steel
towers were torn down and went to the war effort. But the
hundreds of arrows remain. Their yellow paint is gone,
their concrete cracks a little more with every winter frost,
and no one crosses their path much, except for coyotes
and tumbleweeds. But they're still out there.