In the spring of 1910, just seven years after their successful flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright opened the nation’s first civilian flying school on an old cotton plantation on the outskirts of Montgomery. The flying school was short-lived, however, as mechanical and weather-related problems forced the brothers to close the facility. The location was later used for Maxwell Air Force Base.
Photos courtesy of: Alabama Department of Archives and History, Archive.org, Library of Congress