Kitty Hawk Wings It For 100th Anniversary

ByABC News
December 10, 2003, 1:45 PM

K I L L  D E V I L   H I L L S, N.C., Dec. 11 -- For the 4,757 residents of Dare County, there was little indication that the third Thursday of December 1903 was going to be much different from other wintry days along the North Carolina coast.

Certainly most wouldn't have guessed that this would be the day that the little town of Kitty Hawk and 90-foot Kill Devil Hill, part of a nearby 26 acres of local dunes, would become almost as well known as New York or Washington.

Fewer still would have realized that they had played a possibly pivotal part in the historic event that captured the world's attention that day the first sustained powered flight by a heavier-than-air machine.

The names of Orville and Wilbur Wright are synonymous with the birth of manned flight. But most of their local helpers became footnotes to history, if they're remembered at all.

Still, their descendants insist that the extensive aid of the North Carolinians may have made a difference in the success of the first sustained powered flight.

A Little Help From Their Friends

Without them, it certainly would have taken place much later than it did.

The Wrights had been experimenting with wooden gliders for the previous three years in this area along the Atlantic Ocean. From the beginning, they had called on local people for help. As the brothers from Ohio launched gliders from the dunesabout 1,000 flights in all residents brought them food and mail, built sheds, and delivered needed lumber.

"Surfmen" members of the Kill Devil Hills United States Lifesaving Service Station held guide wires and ropes for many trial flights.

The leader of those men was Capt. Jesse Ward, who was in charge of the lifesaving station. Captain Ward was responsible for making a schedule that allowed him and his men to help the Wrights carry each of their gliders, which weighed from 50 to 600 pounds, up the steep sand dunes for test after test.

The brothers also entrusted him to ferry glider propeller shafts to Elizabeth City and to ship them back to Ohio for retooling.