Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park
16 hrs ·
Look what we found!
Some exciting new changes are happening in the Wright-Dunbar neighborhood and it has helped us uncover some of Dayton’s history. Work is being done on Third Street to connect water and utilities to the new West Social food hall, and city workers allowed us to sneak a peek in the hole they cut in the road!
You can see a timeline of Dayton’s transportation history in the cut-out section of road. A layer of small stones and gravel is followed by logs from a “corduroy road.” Above the logs is another layer of gravel and then bricks, on top of which modern concrete and asphalt are layered. The rail lines from the streetcars and interurbans that ran across Dayton are still imbedded in the layers of road! The workers were kind enough to donate a cut section of the rail line to the park and conservation work will be done to clean it up and stabilize it.
This section of rail line carried Daytonians, including the Wrights and Paul Laurence Dunbar, around the city and helped Dayton grow and evolve. It’s neat to think that this piece of metal was part of Wilbur and Orville’s journey to and from Kitty Hawk and the Huffman Prairie!
Images: 1) Ranger Ryan holding this hefty chunk of transportation history, a streetcar rail, NPS Photo / Ed Roach. 2) Labeled layers of road construction techniques, NPS Photo / Kathleen Walters. 3) Layers without text. 4) The hole in Third St. with one uncut streetcar rail spanning the gap, NPS Photo / Ed Roach.
#DaytonAviation #DaytonHistory #TransportationHistory #WrightDunbar #NPS #FindYourPark

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