See a twin of Amelia Earhart’s last plane as new museum opens
The daring pilot still holds a grip on our imaginations nearly a century later – and now, Earhart fans can bask in her globe-trotting history back on her native Kansas soil.
The Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum is scheduled to open on Friday in her hometown of Atchison, about an hour’s drive north of Kansas City. A ribbon-cutting ceremony is set for noon CT, and then at 12:30 p.m., the doors open to the public.
The centerpiece of the museum is Muriel, the world’s only remaining Lockheed Electra 10-E aircraft, according to a news release from the museum.
“Named after Earhart’s younger sister, Grace Muriel Earhart Morrissey, Muriel is identical to the plane Earhart flew on her final, fateful flight around the world” in 1937, according to the release.
The museum will also be packed with 14 interactive exhibits.
“The new Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum will celebrate a woman who showed us what it means to ‘reach for the stars,’ ” said Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly in the release.
Earhart’s legacy
Founder Karen Seaburg explained to Travel why she worked to open this museum, the brainchild of her late husband, Ladd.
“There’s not a museum like this about Amelia. There are a lot of STEM museums, and there are a lot of history museums,” Seaburg said, referencing the acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.
“What we’ve done is combine STEM and history into a unique museum about her life but also learning about the STEM of flying, aviation and centrifugal force – all the different things kids need to learn and adults, too.”
Seaburg noted Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, was more than a pioneer of the skies.
“She was a suffragette. Because of her status and because people knew her, she met with President [Herbert] Hoover about getting women the vote,” she said.
Her disappearance over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 was “a huge loss to the entire nation. Kansas obviously and Atchison … and she was an international figure.”
