Airmail in the Early Days

All over the USA, Seventy foot concrete arrows can be found in remote locations. Follow them, and they’ll point you out of the desert.


 
They come courtesy of the US Postal Service’s Air Force and will point you all the way across the continental United States.


 
They were constructed in 1924 to guide postal planes in the right direction as they carried mail from coast to coast.


 
These old planes couldn’t rely on radio as much at the time, so they used these arrows, along with beacon towers, to navigate.
 

 
 

 
 
The arrows and beacons bisect the United States
from San Francisco to New York City.

The towers were 50 feet tall and fixed with gas lights
that could be seen from 10 miles away, in order to help
lost pilots find their way.
 
 
This is a model of the arrows and towers in their heyday.

 
World War II brought new advances in radio technology effectively making the towers and arrows system obsolete. The towers were mostly dismantled.


 
There has been an effort to restore and preserve some of them, however. Like this one in New Mexico complete with its generator shack.


 
 

This is a pretty cool piece of history, even if it was short lived. To think of those early postal pilots navigating like this from coast to coast is mind blowing.