First Air Flight Over Nevada

Nevada's first powered flight lifted off from a field north of Carson City on June 23, 1910, only seven years after Kitty Hawk. A Curtiss-type biplane climbed about fifty feet and flew roughly half a mile—modest numbers that nonetheless put the Silver State into the air age. Aviation was barely out of the experimental stage, and a brief hop over a sagebrush field counted as a marvel worth marking. The flight foreshadowed Nevada's long aviation future, from the soaring records later set in the Carson Valley to the airfields that would dot the state.

What the plaque says

The first air flight in Nevada took place on the old Raycraft Ranch immediately to the west. The flight was of national interest, not only because an air journey had never before been made at such an altitude (4,675 feet), but also because Ivy Baldwin, a nationally-known parachutist and balloonist, would make the flight. This was a trial flight, as stipulated by the Sagebrush Carnival Committee of Carson City. It was followed by exhibition flights on July 3, 4 and 5 at the Carson City racetrack. Baldwin made the flight in a 48-horsepower Curtiss Paulham biplane, reaching a height of 50 feet and covering one-half mile before returning to the starting point.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carson City — 2.5 mi
  The capital one man platted before there was a territory—where the Comstock's silver became coin at a U.S. Mint and a small sandstone city that has run Nevada ever since
• Stewart Indian School — 5.7 mi
  The federal boarding school that took Great Basin children from 1890 to 1980 to erase their cultures—its student-built stone campus now a tribally-guided museum telling the story in alumni voices
• The Flume Trail & Marlette Lake — 6.8 mi
  The other thing the Comstock took off Lake Tahoe—not its trees but its water, hauled over a mountain range through the highest-pressure pipeline on earth, on a flume grade that is now one of the country's great mountain-bike rides
• Sand Harbor — 8.2 mi
  The crown of Lake Tahoe's Nevada shore—car-sized granite boulders standing in water so clear the boats above them seem to float on air, on a beach the Washoe kept for thousands of summers

More markers nearby

• Lakeview — 1.5 mi
• The Governor’s Mansion — 2.2 mi
• Bliss Mansion — 2.2 mi
• The United States Mint Carson City, Nevada — 2.2 mi