The Arrow Quest Continues : Search for Transcontinental Airway Beacons - Part 2
Continuing our quest to find more of these arrows, we met up with our good friend Carl and headed back out to the Nevada Desert to pick up where we left off. As before, we found that many of the sites have long been lost to history and have little evidence that a concrete arrow or tower had ever been there before. However, we did find a few gems worth sharing and I hope you'll enjoy seeing them now. Being that the best one was also the first one we visited, I will work backwards and save it for last.
First, here are a few more old photos that I found on internet that shows what these pilots were flying back when these airway beacons were necessary.
Again, I'll recap our day out exploring the Northern Nevada Desert by starting from the end and with the sun just setting over the mountains. Here, we reached our final airway beacon site for the trip.
Unfortunately, there was little left of it other than the crumbling remains of a concrete arrow.
Other debris could still be found like bits of corrugated steel and rusty conduit but, that's about it.
Of course, we may have been able to get to the last beacon sooner had we not said hello to some of the locals.
Or, been side tracked by this cool frozen trough that we found along the way.
Of course, the reason why we stopped at the trough was because we could see it from the airway beacon site we were exploring on top of a near by hill.
While the tower foundation was still here and with the nubs of the tower itself still sticking out of the concrete, most of the arrow itself had been destroyed and, from what we could tell, pushed off the hill top.
Here's a shot of what we believe was the arrow point.
You can see here that a little bit of orange paint still remains on it.
Looking around the immediate area, we found a bunch of old discarded bulbs.
Digging around, I also found this old fuse.
But, it was Carl that found the real prize out in the distant - pieces of the red lens!
This would have been a part of the secondary light that would have warned pilots that there was no emergency landing strip here.
View looking east in the general direction of the next beacon.
A parting shot of our Jeeps before heading out to our next destination.
Before we found the beacon site on top of the hill, we crossed a long valley and came across a well built brick building out in the middle of nowhere.
Apparently, at one point and time, this was a Bell Telephone relay station.
Unfortunately, vandals have had their way with it but surprisingly, it was still in pretty good shape and way better than anything you would find out in California.
Earlier in the day, we stopped over at very interesting airway beacon site that had very little left of anything but, intrigued me because of what I saw from Google Earth. If you look real carefully at this screen shot, you can just make out what look like concentric circles.
Need some help seeing it? Have a look again with the aid of yellow lines to draw them out.
At the site itself, all we could find were busted up bits of concrete and, if you followed them, you could see how they were arranged to make up these circles in the sand.
Just a bit of the paint that originally colored the concrete can still be seen.
Looking west from here, you can see the hill where yet another beacon site is located and, where our journey for the day began.
Through all my research, I had found that there might be another airway beacon tower in the Northern Nevada desert and I was determined to find it. Needless to say, this is where we started off our day. Here's a shot of Cindy and Carl working their way up a hillside.
Simply outstanding!! Not only were we able to find it and in amazingly good shape, we were surprised to find that we could actually still drive up to it too.
Looking overhead, we could see a stream of airplanes following the flight path.
Being closer to town, there was more vandalism done to this beacon tower than the one we had found a week before but, it was still in pretty good shape considering the circumstances. Here you can see the last digit of the original 216 that was painted on the side of the shed.
Time to climb up and give the beacon a look.
Back on the ground, we found a lot of broken clear lens pieces.
Again, taking a moment to imagine.
Taking it a step further.
I hope you all enjoyed our continuing journey to explore and seek out the wonderful things you can still find out in the Northern Nevada desert. If you've been transfixed in finding these historical Transcontinental Airway beacons the way we have, we wish you the best of luck and hope you have a great time on your quest. Of course, if you are able to find any of these sites, I would ask that you please leave it as is and do not take any artifacts left behind so that others can enjoy it as well. Until next time
Click on the link below to see our subsequent Arrow Quests:
The Arrow Quest Part 3