The Ezekiel Airship

Scientific American profiled Burrell Cannon's machine on October 12, 1901, before any flight was claimed. The Handbook of Texas says there is debate over whether it ever left the ground; some residents later recalled it rising a few feet. Columnist Bob Bowman wrote that foundry worker Gus Stamps flew it in 1902 while Cannon was preaching at a nearby church. Wikipedia reports no photograph of the flight and no blueprints. Craftsman Bob Lowery and the Pittsburg Optimist Club built a replica in 1986 and 1987, now shown at the Northeast Texas Rural Heritage Center.

What the plaque says

The Ezekiel Airship Baptist minister and inventor Burrell Cannon (1848-1922) led some Pittsburg investors to establish the Ezekiel airship Company and build a craft described in the Biblical book of Ezekiel. The ship had large, fabric-covered wings powered by an engine that turned four sets of paddles. It was built in a nearby machine shop and was briefly airborne at this site late in 1902, a year before the Wright brothers first flew. Enroute to the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, the airship was destroyed by a storm. In 1913 a second model crashed, and the Rev. Cannon gave up the project. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Bob Sandlin State Park — 8.6 mi
  A 1987 state park on a 9,000-acre reservoir, where a Republic of Texas stockade called Fort Sherman stood in 1838 and the Caddo lived from A.D. 800 to 1860, now with fishing piers, trails and cabins.
• Daingerfield State Park — 16 mi
  A pine-and-hardwood park built in 1935-39 by a white and a Black Civilian Conservation Corps company, with a dammed lake, Bass Lodge and a 2.4-mile loop trail around the water.

More markers nearby

• Site of First Carnegie Library in Texas — steps away
• Pittsburg — 0.2 mi
• Pitts Family Cemetery — 0.3 mi
• New Mine Baptist Church — 2.8 mi