Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park, Dayton

Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park in Dayton, Ohio, United States that commemorates three important historical figures—Wilbur Wright, Orville Wright, and poet Paul Laurence Dunbar—and their work in the Miami Valley.Park historyThe idea for the present-day Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park was first conceived by Jerry Sharkey. Much of the Dayton neighborhood where Orville and Wilbur Wright had lived and worked had already been destroyed by the 1970s. Neglect, riots during the 1960s, and a highway project through the city had leveled much of the neighborhood. Decades earlier, Henry Ford had also relocated one of the Wrights' bicycle shops from Dayton to its present location in Greenfield Village, Michigan, for display.Sharkey's quest to preserve the Wright brothers' legacy began when he purchased their last surviving bicycle shop in Dayton for just $10,000, which saved the building from demolition. He also founded the Aviation Trail Inc., a nonprofit group dedicated to the creation of a potential national park or historic district encompassing the Wright brothers' buildings. Sharkey enlisted the help of local political and media figures to lobby for the creation of the park. Notable figures who supported its creation included the descendants of the Wright brothers, aviation historian Tom Crouch, U.S. District Judge Walter H. Rice, then-U.S. Rep. Dave Hobson, Dayton Daily News publisher Brad Tillson, and Michael Gessel, an aide to former U.S. Rep. Tony P. Hall. The group lobbied federal officials and the National Park Service to incorporate the landmarks related to the Wright brothers, which are scattered throughout the city, into a new historic trail.