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America’s First Air Navigation System Used Giant Stone Arrows To Guide Pilots
Equal parts genius and archaic
In the 1920s, smart people were trying to figure out how best to use the new airplane technology. There were competing elements that believed that planes were not more useful than trains. Planes could only fly by day. They had to navigate by sight. There was no good radio system for communication to relay delays or interruptions of service. These were all problems that the railroads had long figured out.
In order to compete with the railroads, proponents of air travel proposed building a highway across the country, but for planes. The proposal called for dozens of lighted arrows that could be spotted from the air along with accompanying radio stations to improve communication.
The proposal was called the Transcontinental Airway System and it was adopted in 1923.
Highway in the sky
The Transcontinental Airway System stretched from New York to San Francisco. The system called for a series of lighted beacons to be placed every dozen miles to keep planes flying on track. Along the way, in the vast unpopulated stretch of plains, dirt runways were set up with generators and fuel in case a pilot had to ditch or ran into mechanical issues. They designed the whole system like a roadway. It was lighted, it had pit stops and it led planes west and east across the country.
In particularly featureless areas, large concrete arrows were set up on the ground to help point pilots towards the next waypoint.
In the mountains, beacons were set up closer together and in clusters, like lighthouses on the coast.
It was ingenious. But it was also archaic.
By the numbers
In 1925, the Transcontinental Airway System comprised 284 beacons stretching over 2,665 miles. The system was later expanded to encompass more of the country. At its peak, the system had 1,500 beacons and covered 18,000 miles. It linked New York, California, Dallas, Salt Lake City, Las…
