Medicine Bow – International Airport? (VIDEO)
This humble little grass air strip helped shape America.
In the video below, you will see what this important airport looks like today.
Medicine Bow has always been a humble little town. But at one point it was an important stop on America's first coast-to-coast rail way, it's first coast-to-coast highway and the nation's first air mail service.
The town was even made famous in the best selling novel, The Virginian.
As if the Pony Express wasn't daring enough, next came the brave and slightly foolhardy men who first took the mail to the sky.
Using old and not so reliable World War I surplus planes, the United States Postal Service was determined to figure out how to fly mail from coast to coast saving up to a month of travel time if they were successful.
At the little Medicine Bow airport there is a cement arrow, pointing the flyers to their next stop. These arrows were placed across the nation for the pilots to see and follow from the air.
The only way to navigate was to fly low and follow the Union Pacific railroad tracks across the country and across Wyoming. The video below will show you what sort of airports they were looking for.
Cheyenne, Medicine Bow, Rock Springs, and other towns along the route were refueling and repair points on the map.
Many planes crashed, for any on a long list of reasons. Some men died.
The book "Wyoming Air Mail Pioneers" chronicles the men who were legends, heroes, and celebrities of their time. They had several stories written about them in newspapers across America.