Ak-Sar-Ben Field and the U.S. Air Mail

Jack Knight was scheduled to fly only the North Platte to Omaha leg on the night of February 22, 1921. He left North Platte at 10:44 p.m., met snow near Kearney about midnight, and reached Omaha around 1:10 a.m., where the relief pilot refused to take off into the storm. Knight, his nose broken in a crash the week before, went on himself at 1:59 with only a road map of country he had never flown, landed at Iowa City by the light of railroad flares, and found Lake Michigan when the fog lifted at daybreak.

What the plaque says

Ak-Sar-Ben Field and the U.S. Air Mail Ak-Sar-Ben Field, whose hangars were located on the southeastern corner of these grounds, was used extensively during the early development of U.S. Postal Air Mail Service. Ray Benedict landed here with the first air mail from Chicago on May 15, 1920 and William DeWald piloted the return flight the same day. The Omaha-San Francisco leg of the transcontinental route was opened by Pilot Buck Hefron the following September. Daytime air mail service from New York to San Francisco began on September 8, 1920 and the first shipment from the east was flown into Omaha by James Murray. Although the early air mail flights took place during daylight hours, the feasibility of night flying was soon explored. On February 22, 1921, Jack Knight took off from the North Platte, Nebraska airfield on the first night air mail flight in the United States. He landed here at Ak-Sar-Ben Field before continuing on to Chicago. The efforts of these pioneer aviators led to the inauguration, on July 1, 1924, of day-night air mail service from coast to coast. In September, 1974, the Air Mail Pioneers of America met in Omaha to observe the 50th Anniversary of this significant event in aviation history. Knights of Ak-Sar-Ben Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Joslyn Art Museum — 3.7 mi
  Omaha's free art museum, a 1931 Art Deco memorial with two modern pavilions, and the keeper of Karl Bodmer's watercolors from the upper Missouri in 1833 and 1834.
• Malcolm X Birthsite — 4.1 mi
  The North Omaha lot where Malcolm Little was born in May 1925 and his family was driven out by the Klan, saved by Rowena Moore and now planned as a cultural center.
• The Durham Museum (Omaha Union Station) — 4.5 mi
  Omaha's 1931 Union Station, Gilbert Stanley Underwood's Art Deco depot for the Union Pacific, closed to trains in 1971 and kept as a city museum with its waiting room intact.
• Winter Quarters and the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery — 6.7 mi
  The Latter-day Saint camp of 1846 to 1848 on Omaha land in what is now Florence, where hundreds died the first winter, and the cemetery and trail center beside it.

More markers nearby

• Omaha — 0.6 mi
• Poynter Hall — 2.1 mi
• George and Sarah Joslyn Home — 2.4 mi
• Duchesne Academy — 2.9 mi