With great anticipation, Wright Brothers National Memorial Visitor Center will reopen to the public on Saturday, October 20th which will be a free day for the public.
While the monument and park grounds have remained open, what many would think of as the museum part of the national park has been closed for two years, undergoing meticulous renovations to the both the building inside and out, as well as the entire interior exhibit experience. So there’s actually two separate simultaneous projects, one is a 5.8 million dollar effort to preserve and restore its architecturally significant Mission 66 era features that were design elements prominent when it was originally constructed in the 1960’s, and a separate 1.5 million dollar project to design, fabricate, and install all new interactive exhibits, and redisplay some existing material in new more contextual way.
The fully accessible exhibits reveal an intimate look at Wilbur and Orville Wright, along with their inspirations and setbacks in achieving flight. The exhibits highlight why they chose Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills for their flight experiments from 1900-1903 and what life was like for the brothers during their time in the Outer Banks.
