Lindberg in the Texas panhandle

[editor]

I was doing some research on something entirely unrelated, I came across this map from the Chicago Daily Tribune September 25, 1934.

A few things strike me about this map --Fort Worth is the big North Texas city, not Dallas; the states are labeled with the abbreviations used before the Post Office standardized them in the 70's; and the whole thing looks like it was drawn by a child with a crayon.

[nx99]

In March 1924 Charles A. Lindbergh made an unplanned stop in Camp Wood, three years before his solo flight from New York to Paris. Lindbergh, then waiting to enter Brooks Field at San Antonio as a United States Air Service cadet, was attempting to fly to California with a friend, Leon Klink, and followed the Uvalde and Northern railroad up the Nueces River, mistaking it for the Southern Pacific along the Rio Grande. When the line ended at the recently established cedar town, Lindbergh, realizing his error, landed in a pasture to the north. Later, having flown to Camp Wood itself and landed on the main street, he attempted to take off, hit a telephone pole with a wing, and crashed into the paint section of Walter Pruett's hardware store. The two fliers remained in Camp Wood for several days, awaiting parts and making repairs, and their visit and the circumstances surrounding it were still vividly recalled and related over half a century later. In 1976 the town of Camp Wood renamed a park and a street after Lindbergh and Klink respectively, and the state placed a historical marker celebrating the event.

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/CC/hlc3.html