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An Art Deco monument with curved, wing-like designs on either side and a lit beacon at the top stands atop Big Kill Devil Hill at Wright Brothers National Memorial, Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. The National Park Service says it was dedicated on 19 November 1932.
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Wright Brothers Monument
This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
Approximate location · 36.013° N, 75.672° W
FIELD GUIDE
The story
The Wright Brothers Monument sits atop Big Kill Devil Hill at the Wright Brothers National Memorial, a National Park Service site in North Carolina. The park says the Wright brothers achieved the first successful airplane flights on 17 December 1903, after four years of scientific experimentation.
According to the Park Service, the monument was designed by Alfred Easton Poor and Robert Perry Rodgers in 1928, in an Art Deco style that highlights bold geometric shapes, with curved, wing-like designs on either side and a lit beacon at the top. Their firm, Rodgers & Poor, won a contest to decide who would design it. The memorial was dedicated on 19 November 1932, with Orville Wright in attendance. The NPS page notes that visitors could once ascend the very narrow stairs to the top, and that before the Mission 66 era visitor center and museum was built, the inside of the monument acted as a contact station.
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PRACTICAL
Plan your stop
WHAT TO EXPECT
The park's Plan Your Visit page says visitors can climb Big Kill Devil Hill to see the monument. Hours and fees are on the park's own pages and are not stated here.
ACCESS
Wright Brothers National Memorial, 1401 National Park Drive, Manteo, NC 27954 is the park's mailing address per NPS (page updated October 2024); the memorial is at Kill Devil Hills. Hours and fees: see the National Park Service. The NPS describes the interior stairs in the past tense, so do not assume the interior is open.
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