For a Little While, Walk in Glenn Curtiss’ Footsteps
After all these stories, the road comes home.
Back to Hammondsport.
Back to Keuka Lake.
Back to the village streets where a curious boy once rode a bicycle, tinkered with machines, dreamed bigger than anyone around him could possibly have imagined—and eventually helped change the world.
This Saturday, September 19, Wings & Wheels returns to Hammondsport, presented by the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum.
There will be beautiful machines to see.
Motorcycles.
Automobiles.
Airplanes.
Seaplanes.
But somewhere between admiring the cars and looking toward the sky, I hope you do something else.
Pause.
Just for a moment.
And let yourself go back.
BEFORE HE BECAME GLENN H. CURTISS
Before the records.
Before the headlines.
Before airplanes carried his name.
Before the Navy came to Hammondsport.
Before the world knew who he was.
Glenn Curtiss was simply Glenn. G.H. to his friends.
A boy growing up in a small village at the end of a crooked lake.
He knew these hills.
He knew these streets.
He knew the wind coming off Keuka.
He knew what it was to climb onto a bicycle and discover that wonderful feeling of going just a little faster than he had gone the day before.
He took things apart.
He studied how they worked.
He wondered how they might work better.
And perhaps most importantly, he was willing to try.
And fail.
And try again.
There is something about that part of Glenn's story that has always stayed with me.
We know how the story ends, so it is easy to look backward and see greatness.
Glenn didn't have that luxury.
He couldn't see the chapters ahead.
He didn't know that bicycles would lead to motorcycles.
That motorcycles would lead to engines.
That engines would help carry him into the sky.
He couldn't possibly have known that men from the United States Navy would one day come to this little village to learn from him.
He simply kept following the next idea.
And then the next.
And the next.
ON SATURDAY, WALK A LITTLE SLOWER
When you come to Wings & Wheels, don't hurry through it.
Walk a little slower.
Stand in the Village Square and look around.
These weren't historic buildings to Glenn.
They were simply his town.
These were the streets beneath his feet.
This was home.
Then make your way toward Depot Park.
Stop there, too.
Look across Keuka Lake.
Listen.
Maybe you'll hear children laughing or conversations drifting through the park.
Maybe you'll hear an engine.
Maybe you'll hear an airplane overhead.
Maybe the wind will be moving across the water.
And for just a few seconds, try to erase everything you know about what came later.
Picture yourself standing along this shore when human flight was still astonishing.
A strange machine begins moving across the lake.
Its engine roars.
It gathers speed.
Faster.
Faster.
And then—
the water lets go.
It flies.
What must that have felt like to the people standing along this shore?
What must it have felt like to Glenn?
THE MACHINES TELL HIS STORY
That is what makes Wings & Wheels so special.
Look closely enough, and the machines gathered in Hammondsport tell the story of Glenn Curtiss almost chronologically.
A bicycle represents the boy.
The young man discovering speed, mechanics, competition and the freedom of wheels beneath him.
The motorcycle represents the racer.
The fearless competitor who pushed engines harder, chased speed and earned a place in history as the "Fastest Man on Earth."
The automobile represents the engineer and entrepreneur.
The man who understood that machines were changing how Americans lived, traveled and thought about distance.
The airplane represents the inventor.
The man who joined others at the very beginning of aviation and helped prove that controlled, practical flight could become something far greater than an experiment.
And then there is the seaplane.
Perhaps no machine brings the story back to Keuka quite like that one.
The seaplane represents the pioneer.
The man who looked at water not as an obstacle to aviation, but as another possibility.
Here, on and around Keuka Lake, ideas were tested.
Problems were solved.
Pilots learned.
Machines evolved.
And the relationship between Glenn Curtiss and American naval aviation grew.
More than a century later, when a seaplane once again moves across Keuka Lake, it is hard not to feel something.
Because these aren't just airplanes returning to a lake.
They are echoes.
BUT GLENN WAS MORE THAN HIS MACHINE
Maybe this is the most important thing I have learned while writing this Road to Wings & Wheels series.
We can become so focused on what Glenn Curtiss accomplished that we forget to think about the man himself.
The records are extraordinary.
The motorcycles are fascinating.
The airplanes are breathtaking.
The inventions changed history.
But underneath all of it was a human being.
A son.
A brother.
A husband.
A father.
A friend.
A neighbor.
A man who experienced joy and loss.
A man who worked with his hands.
A man who made mistakes.
A man who faced competition and disappointment.
A man who sometimes had to convince people that an idea everyone else thought impossible just might work.
He wasn't born knowing how to build an airplane.
He wasn't handed a roadmap telling him where his life would lead.
He started with curiosity.
With mechanical ability.
With determination.
And with an almost relentless desire to discover
what might happen if he tried.
That may be the part of Glenn Curtiss' story worth remembering most.
AND THEN LOOK AROUND YOU
More than a century has passed.
Glenn is gone.
The people who watched those early experiments are gone.
The world he knew has changed beyond anything he could have imagined.
But on Saturday, something remarkable happens.
The machines come home.
The motorcycles gather.
The automobiles line the streets.
Aircraft return to the sky.
Seaplanes return to Keuka.
The Village Square fills with people.
Depot Park fills with families.
And the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum continues the work of preserving and sharing the story of the man who began here.
Today's pilots become part of that story.
Today's collectors become part of it.
The historians who preserve it become part of it.
The volunteers who make events like this possible become part of it.
The parents bringing children become part of it.
And every person who stops long enough to wonder about the man behind those machines becomes part of it, too.
History isn't only something that happened.
Sometimes history is something we return to.
Something we preserve.
Something we tell our children.
Something we carry forward.
WELCOME HOME, GLENN
I have spent these past weeks writing about Glenn Curtiss as a boy, a bicycle racer, a motorcyclist, an engine builder, an aviator, an inventor and a pioneer of naval aviation.
But perhaps there was only one place where he could simply be Glenn.
Hammondsport.
Home.
And maybe that is why Wings & Wheels feels like more than an event.
For one day, the pieces of his life seem to gather again in the place where so much of it began.
Wheels on the streets.
Wings above the village.
Seaplanes on Keuka Lake.
And home beneath them all.
So come Saturday.
Bring the kids.
Bring the grandparents.
Bring the person who loves old cars, the one who loves airplanes, the one who loves history—and even the one who thinks none of those things are really their thing.
Because this story is bigger than machines.
It is the story of what can happen when a curious child from a little village is allowed to wonder.
An idea becomes an experiment.
An experiment becomes an invention.
And an invention helps change the world.
Most of all, it is the story of a man who traveled farther than that boy on a bicycle could ever have dreamed—
yet whose story still leads us back here.
To Hammondsport.
To Keuka Lake.
To home.
And sometime during Wings & Wheels, when an engine rumbles through the village or a seaplane moves across the water, stop for just a moment.
Look around.
Listen to the wind.
Think about the boy who once stood beside this same lake, with no idea where his curiosity would eventually take him.
More than a century later, we're still telling his story.
And this weekend, in the place where it all began,
his story comes home.
Welcome home, Glenn.
WINGS & WHEELS — COME BE PART OF THE STORY
Now it’s your turn to walk those Hammondsport streets, stand beside Keuka Lake and experience the machines that tell so much of Glenn Curtiss’ story.
Wings & Wheels takes over Hammondsport
Saturday, September 19, from 10 AM–4 PM, presented by the
Glenn H. Curtiss Museum.
Seaplanes, classic and exotic cars, motorcycles, demonstrations, kids’ activities and more will fill the Village Square and Depot Park—and
admission is FREE.
Here’s what’s happening throughout the day:
- 9–10 AM — Car Registration on Mechanic Street
- 10 AM — Event begins! Cars and motorcycles throughout the Village; seaplanes at Depot Park; local shops, restaurants and concessions open throughout the event
- 11 AM–12 PM — Seaplane Landing & “Bomb” Drop Contest at Depot Park
- 12–12:30 PM — Fireboat Demonstrations by Pulteney and Hammondsport Fire Departments at Depot Park
- 2–3 PM — Seaplane Salute to Glenn H. Curtiss, the Father of Naval Aviation at Depot Park
- 3:30 PM — Kids Choice Awards Announced at the Village Square Bandstand
- All Day — Kid Zone at Depot Park, with hands-on activities and games for kids
FREE SHUTTLE SERVICE
Free shuttle service will run
10 AM–4 PM between
Depot Park, Village Square, Hammondsport Schools and the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum, making it easy to park, explore and enjoy the day.
And don't forget the
Kids Choice! Kids can get a ballot from event staff and vote for their favorite car until 3 PM.
Come for the airplanes.
Come for the cars and motorcycles.
Come for the lake.
But while you're here,
look beyond the machines.
Remember the boy who rode these streets, the man who tested his ideas on these waters, and the little village that helped shape one of America's great aviation pioneers.
Saturday, history comes home to Hammondsport.
And I can't think of a better place to finish our
Road to Wings & Wheels.
Stay Rooted. Stay Keuka.™
Small Towns. Big Stories. One Crooked Lake.™
