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| Hiking | 2.50 Miles |
900 AEG |
| | Hiking | 2.50 Miles | 1 Hour 55 Mns | | 1.88 mph |
| 900 ft AEG | 35 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | Tibber and LindaAnn teamed up recently, and did a hike that included this photo.
[ photo ]
Comments on the photo, including mine, were speculation, as to what we were looking at.
However, the photo made me think of all the actual Airway Beacon Towers that once helped pilots navigate, back in the 1920s through the 1950s. For night flying, the beacon lights helped pilots stay on course more safely.
Back in the 1920s, the US Post Office started up 'Air Mail', and originated the use of the beacon towers, with their huge, bright beacon lights. With the bright beacons, they could more safely 'deliver the mail by air' through the night.
Back then flight air navigation instruments were almost nonexistent, and night flying was very dangerous. Even after rudimentary radio navigation came along, the beacons were still used.
At one time there were over 2,000 beacons all over the USA.
HA - In 1921, before inventing the beacon system for night flying, they experimented with setting bonfires, scattered along a route from New York to to the west coast. YIKES
When more sophisticated navigation systems evolved, the airway beacon towers were not needed, and most were decommissioned. Most were either dismantled and taken away, or if located at an airport, some were modified to be just regular airport beacons. (Cottonwood and Holbrook have airport beacons that started life as airway navigation beacons).
There are zillions of websites about the beacons (and the huge concrete navigation arrows on the ground). If interested in more specifics - Search the web.
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Since most of my hikes seem to include "locating artifacts in the ground", I have gathered a long list of airway beacon towers I would like to locate. Trouble is, most are gone, with no evidence left of their existence. Some beacon locations just have the remanence of a small enclosure used for a remote power source.
When possible, electric lines brought power to the beacon lights, but the remote beacons needed on-sight tanks of fuel as a power source to run generators. Think of the top of Newman Peak. That beacon had to have fuel brought up to the peak often.
The airway tower on this hike is still fastened to the ground, but is 'bent' down to the ground also.
Ironically this beacon tower location has a benchmark, and two reference marks nearby.
Almost all other towers do not.
Anyway, I thank tibber and LindaAnn for getting me, again, thinking about these "Airway Towers of yesteryear".
I know of at least a few that are still standing, and now I'll have to get serious about hiking to their locations. |
| _____________________
Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost
J.R.R.TOLKIEN |
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