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ALEXANDRIA, Va. - On July 30, 1909 — 117 years ago today — Orville Wright and U.S. Army Lt. Benjamin Foulois lifted off from Fort Myer and flew to Shuter's Hill in Alexandria and back. A tethered balloon floated above the hill so the pilot would know when to turn around. The successful demonstration flight was required for the Army's purchase of its first military airplane. Just five years and seven months after the Wright Brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903, the age of military aviation had arrived — and Alexandria's skyline was part of the moment.
Shuter's Hill itself is worth knowing. The high bluff overlooking King Street — today home to the George Washington Masonic National Memorial at 101 Callahan Drive — is named for a local resident who lived nearby in the 1740s. But the hill's history runs far deeper. Archaeologists have found evidence of Native Americans living on the site for more than 5,000 years. John Mills built an elegant mansion on the hilltop in 1781. During the Civil War, two fortifications — Fort Dahlgren and Fort Ellsworth — were built atop the hill as part of the Defenses of Washington. In 1922, construction began on the Masonic Memorial that stands there today.
When Wright and Foulois flew over it in 1909, they were the latest in a very long line of people who had looked up at — or down from — that particular hill.
