[BITList] CONCRETE ARROWS

[FA]

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  You might find this interesting
frank


*Giant Concrete Arrows That*

*Point Your Way Across America...*




*D27F054637C24C61B3FA0A5AA36E00FD at LynHP*




*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.*




*0B4342BBEFEC44A18FD01655F4A8392C at LynHP*




*What are these giant arrows? Some kind of surveying mark?*

*Landing beacons for flying saucers? Earth’s turn signals?*




*668DE8727CF34C61B4E9D2A3CE7B32E4 at LynHP*




*No, it's...*

*The Transcontinental Air Mail Route.*




*E6BA9F7FFCA74E7E9390170B8F0AF30D at LynHP*




*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.)*




*6EF8BDEEA8D14FF484AE54A71D5136F6 at LynHP*




*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 1924, just a year 
after*

*Congress funded it, the line of giant concrete markers stretched from 
Rock Springs,*

*Wyoming to Cleveland, Ohio. The next summer, it reached all the way to 
New York,*

*and by 1929 it spanned the continent uninterrupted, the envy of postal 
systems worldwide.*




*BA5F9D25CEBB4307BF979CB85BC0813E at LynHP*




*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.*



























	

	

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