Dreams of Duneland by Schoon Kenneth J

Author:Schoon, Kenneth J.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press

Lee Botts, president of the Indiana Dunes Environmental Learning Center, dedicated the center’s new central building to Henry Chandler Cowles on Friday, October 9, 1998—nearly a hundred years after Cowles’ landmark work was first published. It was only fitting that a learning center lodge be named after Duneland’s earliest and foremost educator.

Dunes Learning Center

1896 Octave Chanute and His Flying Machines

Octave Chanute was already well known as a brilliant engineer before he began his experiments in aviation at the Indiana Dunes. The chief engineer for the Erie Railroad, he had designed railroad bridges, flood control dams, and even the Kansas City and Chicago Stockyards. Chanute, Kansas, is named for him.

Chanute’s avocation, however, was flying machines. He gathered stories about others who were making and testing flying machines and published a series of twenty-seven articles about aviation in The Railroad and Engineering Journal. His book Progress in Flying Machines came out in 1894.

Chanute recognized that stability was the primary problem with existing gliders. Being an engineer himself, he decided to design a glider that could be controlled by a pilot with a minimum of effort. He also decided that the soft sands of the Indiana Dunes would be perfect for testing various “machines.”

So it was that on June 22, 1896, sixty-two-year-old Octave Chanute, accompanied by his son, Charles, William Avery, and Augustus Herring, took the train from Chicago to the dunes at Miller. Besides provisions and camping gear, they took along two disassembled gliders and a kite.

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