CIBOLA COUNTY, NM – Steve Owen was named Regional Man of the Year during a Historical Aviation Museum Society Convention in Denver, Colo., during the April 20-21 event. He was honored for his work with the Western New Mexico Aviation Heritage Museum in Cibola County as well as for his travels across the Southwest in the study and search of historical aviation relics. The area’s aviation museum is not a large building but it’s filled with vast information on some of the nation’s most historical aviation flight facts. And it’s right around the corner for Milan and Grants’ area residents.
The Western New Mexico Aviation Heritage Museum, created to preserve the region’s air travel history, is open to guests Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The historical home, located at the Grants/Milan Municipal Airport, is run by the Cibola County Historical Society (CCHS).
Museum features include notable aircraft, aviation and pilot records, flying triumphs and tragedies, and evolution of early airway navigational aids.
The intimate museum building, which is 140-square-feet, is a onetime Site 62 generator shed recreated by the CCHS in late 2011 after being donated by the City of Grants, and houses old pictures, plane parts and other memorabilia.
One of the museum’s stories tells of the first great tragedy of a U.S. flight, which occurred on a ridge of Mount Taylor – the 1929 Ford TriMotor crash. In that late summer, the Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT) struck the mountain with five passengers and a crew of three.
In a 2009 historical write-up of the accident, it states the crash “dealt a stunning blow to TAT’s `plane-train’ cross-country air service that connected the [two] coasts in only 48 hours.”
The original airway route, as noted in the CCHS airport museum brochure, was created by aviation pilot great Charles Lindbergh in 1929. He was a “technical advisor for a new airline, Transcontinental Air Transport.”
In its original route, the early airway flew the path of Route 66 and the Santa Fe Railroad from Grants to Gallup and onward. But following the devastating crash on Mount Taylor, “the beacons were moved south to straighten the air route.”
The Grants/Milan Airport is home to one of the old pioneer beacons – from 1929 – a gorgeous skyward relic, which stands as a landmark next to the museum. A few years ago, the 51-foot light tower was donated by the City of Williams, Ariz.
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