Concrete Arrow Quest : Search for Transcontinental Airway Beacons - Part 7

It's hard to imagine that Cindy and I have been going out and looking for these concrete arrows and airway beacons for about two years now and still finding new ones to visit and explore. In fact, thanks to a tip that Linebacker posted up a while back, we recently made a stop over at Western New Mexico Aviation Heritage Museum at the Grants-Milan Airport to see the wonderful beacon and arrow display that they have there. While this wasn't the original location for much of what you see, the tower and buildings are in fact original structures from the Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT) route that was laid out by Charles Lindbergh back in 1929 and were donated to and restored by the Cibola County Historical Society. This is the one place you can visit and see what an airway beacon, it's tower, concrete arrow and supporting buildings would have looked like back in its prime.

Unfortunately, it took us a bit longer to get out here that we had hoped and showed up just as the sun was setting.




As luck would have it, we ran into someone to great us too.


A couple of shots of the tower and generator shed.




Apparently, this 1929 beacon tower originally stood near Williams, AZ.




The 1929 generator shed originally came from Bonita Canyon which is located 10 miles to the south of Grants-Millan up in the Zuni Mountains.




Unfortunately, the concrete arrow is a replica but understandably so.




This is the actual 1953-73 Grants Flight Service Station. As you can see, it has been fully restored and now houses the museum.




They even have a standard Stevenson Screen enclosure or what was also known as a "weather box" that housed sensitive weather instruments and protected them from the elements.


Last but not least, there's even a memorial here dedicated to a Ford Trimotor that crashed and killed 8 people back on September 3, 1929.


You can see a lot more photos and read all kinds of great information about the Western New Mexico Aviation Heritage Museum by clicking on the link below:

http://www.cibolahistory.org/aviation-heritage-museum.html

Of course, if you would like to see other adventures we've had looking for these amazing concrete arrows, click on the following link:

Concrete Arrow Quest : Search for Transcontinental Airway Beacons

 

Oh man, that sucks! I hope they were able to fix the problem.

 

As I've said before, I cannot wait to head west and finally see one of these in person. And at the very least, if they are all gone by that time, I can still visit this museum. Thank you for sharing.