The Wright Brother’s Memorial commemorates a momentous achievement with an impressive hill and monument but little else. Everything is well maintained but for $10 per person, there are better uses of your time and money. Consider Jockey’s Ridge down the road.
Flight Path to History
The Wright Brother’s Memorial is located in Kill Devil Hills on the sound side of Bodie island. The main entrance to the park is clearly marked with a sign and a fitting gate. There is a small set of guard shacks just inside the entrance. They are there to collect the entry feed (10$/person when we visited). The parking area was plenty large for the visitor center and the memorial.
Rocks and Wind
There are two main areas to visit. The visitor center and the monument. The visitor center is a co-located with the flight path markers and flight hanger recreation. The memorial is the unmissable hill with the large monument on top.
Small Rocks at the Bottom of the Hill
The flight marker stones are roughly the location of the take off and landing of the famous heavier than air flights. These commemorative boulders are the most historically significant parts of the park. These are arguably unassuming when compared to the memorial. We almost did not walk out to look at them.
The visitor center at The Wright Brother’s Memorial has an in-depth museum of the Wright brothers and flight in general. It is a little crazy to think about how quickly humanity moved from these humble beginnings to landing on the moon. The exhibits do a nice job of showing that. There is also a life size replica of the plane in here too. The park holds regular presentations on the marvels of this machine and discuss the significance of the brothers’ work. We enjoyed looking at displays around the plane depicting some the significant challenges they faced during this endeavor.
Big Rocks on Big Hill
The monument/memorial is a massive stone structure at the top of a near by hill. The monument is very impressive in size and location. You can see the beach and much of the surrounding towns from the top of this hill. What is a little funny is this hill is not where the first flight occurred. This (and other) dunes are where they completed 3 years of GLIDING experiments to understand how air works and could harness lift.
The large memorial is utterly massive and was completed in the 1930’s after stabilizing the hill. The access to the top of the hill is via very long spiraling walkways and or stairs. Despite the curled approach of the walkways, this incline is still aggressive for most wheelchairs/ walkers so be carful. The top of the hill was VERY windy but worth checking out if you come. There is not much to see at the top besides the view. I wish you could access the viewing area on the top of the monument but it is only open for special occasions right now.
I found the “please touch” life size bronze statue of the flight to be far more interesting. It gives a sense of how the moment of first flight may have looked from every possible perspective. If the first parking area around the base of the memorial is packed, keep driving. There are several parking areas that are all about as accessible as the one before it. Most people stop at the first one even though you have to continue down the one way road anyway.
That’s All Folks
For some reason we were expecting something more than a few rocks with a gift shop from the Wright Brother Memorial. Looking back, maybe that was our fault for not doing more research. We had just come from visiting Jockey’s Ridge and found it had much more natural beauty, rugged wilderness and aviation excitement than “the birthplace of flight” just down the street. With a 10$ per person fee for entry, we were less than impressed with what we came and saw here.
Being born and raised in NC I am a little sad that the physical embodiment of our “First in flight” motto is so lack luster. The other national memorials we have visited typically leave us with a sense of awe but we left wondering why we came.
Overall
Unless you are a flight junky or are checking something off your bucket list, do not waste the money at The Wright Brother’s Memorial. Head to Jockey’s Ridge to see hang gliders, fly a kite at the largest living sand dune of the Eastern US coast, and just go to the beach.
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