There had to be a safer way.Įnter the highway of light - a system of airmail beacons that spanned the country. The giant arrows are remnants of the Transcontinental Airmail Route, a sequence of sequentially lighted beacons and giant arrows funded by Congress in 1923 to aid pilots navigating across the United States. Sixty years after the Pony Express, on August 20, 1920, rapid transcontinental mail delivery made a return to the United States via air mail. Nearly 1 in 10 early airmail pilots died during the early days of the postal service's airmail initiative, and emergency landings were common. George, Utah, with concrete arrow indicating the direction to the next beacon. The few pilots who did try to travel at night during this time were taking their lives in their hands. Remnants of Transcontinental Air Mail Route Beacon 37A, atop a bluff in St. Using this process, a letter moving at its absolute fastest might take about 83 hours to get from New York to San Francisco. In 1922, letters sent by airmail would have to leapfrog the country, traveling by air during the day and by train at night. The beacons were the remnants of a transcontinental air route system that had guided commercial and private pilots across the United States since 1935. But airplanes could only operate safely during the daytime, whereas trains could run all night.Īs a result, early transcontinental airmail delivery was a hybrid system.
What good was sending mail by air? Sure, planes could travel faster than trains. Discover the origins of the system of giant arrows connecting the US coast to coast, in itself a fascinating story of trial and error, technological advancem. Postal Service opened up airmail routes during the early 1920s, many people saw it as a frivolous novelty. From 1912 to 1916 they urged Congress to appropriate money to launch airmail service and in 1916, 50,000 was authorized but no aircraft were received due to the absence of suitable planes. Postmaster General Paul Henderson in 1922 " impractical sort of fad and has no place in the serious job of postal transportation." - Second Assistant U.S.