Pan American Airways Blind Flying School

Brownsville was where Pan American learned to fly in cloud. After the airline won Foreign Air Mail Route 8 in 1929, the city became headquarters of its Mexico Division, and pilots crossed the Sierra Madre in bad weather. Pilot Edward Snyder pioneered blind-flying drills here: he spun blindfolded trainees in a revolving chair to show how unreliable their senses were, then put them in a box with a turn-and-bank indicator. After Snyder died in an accident, Harold Gray took over and later headed the airline. Charles Lindbergh flew mail from Mexico City to Brownsville that March.

What the plaque says

Pan American Airways Blind Flying School The development of Mexican oil fields by North American corporations during the 1920s led to a need for reliable transportation into Mexico's interior. As a result, Brownsville soon became a pioneer training center for the now highly technical craft of blind flying, or piloting an aircraft by the use of navigation instruments. In 1929, the Mexican division of Pan American Airways opened a school for instrumentation flying at the Brownsville Airport. The training course was later extended to all divisions of the company. (1986)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stillman House Museum — 4.0 mi
  The 1850 Greek Revival house of Charles Stillman, who laid out Brownsville in 1848 beside the army's Fort Brown, and for a century the home of the Treviño family.
• Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park — 7.5 mi
  A flat coastal prairie north of Brownsville where Taylor's army and Arista's Army of the North fought the first major battle of the Mexican War on May 8, 1846, now interpreted from both sides.
• Port Isabel Lighthouse State Historic Site — 18 mi
  A 72-foot brick tower finished in 1852 for the Brazos Santiago shipping lane, dark from 1905 until a reproduction lens was lit in 2022, and the only Texas lighthouse open to the public.
• Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge — 23 mi
  A coastal refuge set up in 1946 for wintering redhead ducks, with 417 bird species recorded and, by the Fish and Wildlife Service's account, the largest ocelot population in the United States.

More markers nearby

• Port of Brownsville — 3.3 mi
• Fort Brown Reservation — 3.8 mi
• Frank Rabb — 3.8 mi
• Fort Brown, Texas — 3.9 mi