The ?Tarheel State? of North Carolina has an unusual boast. The state is home to the very first airplane flight, made on the sandy hills of the tiny town of Kitty Hawk on the chain of Barrier Islands known as the Outer Banks. Brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright may have lived in Ohio, but they took their flying contraption south in hopes of making it fly!

Orville and Wilbur Wright owned a bicycle shop in the town of Dayton, Ohio when they got the brainwave to develop a flying machine. They worked on it despite many odds and made many designs before coming up with the famous "Wright Flyer" This was made of wood and metal with canvas stretching across the wings. The pilot had to lay flat on his stomach to steer the controls and fly the plane.

The Wright Brothers had taken four years to build this newfangled flying contraption. They worked on it from 1899 to 1903 to figure out the proper aerodynamics necessary to create an airplane. Even their sister helped them by sewing and stretching the canvass across the wing's frame. It took them many years to finalize the design of the first practical airplane.

Before they were ready with their flying contraption, the Wright brothers had made several trips to Kitty Hawk to test gliders in order to better understand aerodynamics. Thus, they were quite familiar with the area and the people when they made their historic trip in 1903. So much so that they often recruited locals to help them haul and repair the Flyer.

Orville and Wilbur's 1903 version of the Wright Flyer was a great deal heavier than the previous planes, in fact it was a whopping 125 pounds heavier than the brothers intended. Since the plane was unable to be launched like the previous models, a 15-foot launching rail was built to help propel the plane skyward. This rail was laughingly known as ?Grand Junction Railroad.?

The brothers then had to postpone their regular tests because of the inclement weather in the late fall and early winter of 1903. This lead them to doubt whether they will at all be able to achieve their intended test flight that year. Things however changed for the better soon, enabling Wright brothers to start testing again and take their historic flight.

On December 17th, 1903 the Wright brothers accomplished their goal and their Flyer took off into the air. After a quick coin toss to see which brother would serve as pilot, Orville climbed into the controls and took off at 10:35 in the morning. Although the temperatures were cold, the plane soared into the North Carolina sky for a whole 12 seconds. The flight was only 120 feet long, but enough to propel the brothers and their plane into the history books.

The brothers made three more flights after their maiden flight. Wilbur took credit for the longest flight, he flew for 59 minutes and covered 852 feet. The State of Carolina witnessed this historic feet on a cold December day. A monument was constructed on top of a hill called Devil Hill, North Carolina to honor this miraculous feet of engineering and the willpower of man.