Remembering Amelia Earhart’s visits to Butler
Almost exactly 96 years ago, Amelia Earhart had lunch in Butler County.
We know, because we have a record of her short layover at the Pittsburgh-Butler Airport on Oct. 13, 1929. Earhart, then, as now, the county’s most famous female flier, was on her way from Long Island, N.Y., to California, and made a quick layover in Butler County before heading on to Columbus, Ohio.
According to the airport’s history, it had officially opened just weeks earlier on Sept. 27 and 28, 1929, on what was originally the Nixon and Dodds farms.
That wasn’t the first time Earhart had visited the Pittsburgh-Butler Airport, now the Pittsburgh-Butler Regional Airport, and it wouldn’t be the last. In early September 1929, she and six other women raced from Cleveland, Ohio, to Butler.
The race drew large crowds, according to the Butler County Historical Society.
“A large crowd gathered at the airport to celebrate the afternoon arrival of the internationally-renowned women, marveling as their planes materialized on the horizon and landed effortlessly on the runway,” Nikol Damato wrote about the race for the historical society. “After welcoming Earhart and the other pilots, the crowd remained to witness their skills as a series of air sports commenced and the festivities continued throughout the evening.”
Earhart was a true icon, and it might be hard to grasp just how famous she was in the 1920s and ’30s.
She was born in 1897, and by the time she was in her early 20s, she became infatuated with flying.
In December 1920, she asked her father about taking a passenger flight, and he agreed. From the moment the plane took off, Earhart was completely hooked.
“As soon as we left the ground I knew I myself had to fly,” she would say of the experience.
She would start to take lessons shortly after, and in 1928, a year after Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean, she would become the first woman to make a trans-Atlantic flight, as a passenger in a three-person plane.
When she arrived back in the United States on July 6, 1928, Earhart, along with the pilot and navigator, got a heroes’ welcome, including a ticker-tape parade and a reception with President Calvin Coolidge.
She turned that brush with national recognition into an image as the world’s foremost woman pilot.
It was in 1930 that her story again intertwined with the Pittsburgh-Butler Airport’s tale. That year she landed her Lockheed Vega 5B at the airport to have extra fuel tanks installed.
A photograph shows her standing next to her plane, waving. In addition to having the fuel tanks installed, she also went through training and was certified on instrument flying during that visit.
She’d use those skills, along with the plane — extra fuel tanks and all — when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic on May 20, 1932.
Earhart’s fame continued to grow and she kept setting records, including becoming the first pilot to fly solo from Honolulu to Oakland, Calif.
She was an author, a professor at Purdue University, a celebrity endorser and an advocate for women fliers.
Her story ended tragically, which is all most people know about her today. On July 2, 1937, almost exactly nine years after the ticker-tape parade celebrating her first trans-Atlantic flight, Earhart was in the midst of a flight around the world. Her plane left New Guinea bound for Howland Island, a remote piece of land halfway between Australia and Hawaii.
Her plane never arrived, and no trace of it has ever been found, leading to speculation about exactly what happened that has continued up to today.
