Ben T. Epps, Georgia's Pioneer Aviator
Athens, Clarke County, Georgia
Marker Inscription
GEORGIA'S PIONEER AVIATOR BEN T. EPPS 1888 - 1937. Ben T. Epps - Georgia's First in Flight - designed, built and in 1907 flew the first airplane in the State of Georgia. He was born in Oconee County, educated in Clarke County, and attended Georgia Tech. A self-taught aviator, aircraft designer, and builder, Epps built the 1907 Monoplane in his shop on Washington Street in Athens and designed and flew new airplanes in 1909, 1911, 1916, 1924, and 1930. The 1924 Epps Monoplane weighed only 350 pounds, had a wingspan of 25 feet, and was powered by a two-cylinder motorcycle engine. Designed for the average man, easy to fly, and inexpensive to operate, it would get 25 miles per gallon at 60 miles per hour. Epps began operation of an airport at this location in 1917, and operated a flying service for the next 20 years. In 1937, he died of injuries here after engine failure and the crash of his light biplane on take-off. 029-16 GEORGIA HISTORIC MARKER 1987
Erected by Georgia Historical Commission
The Story
A self-taught mechanic and inventor, Ben T. Epps designed, built, and flew the first airplane in Georgia in 1907 — just four years after the Wright brothers. From his Athens shop he built a series of ever-lighter monoplanes, including a 1924 model weighing just 350 pounds and powered by a motorcycle engine, and he opened an airfield here in 1917. He died in 1937 from a crash on takeoff at this very field.
Why it matters
Epps stands among the pioneering barnstorming generation of American aviators who, working alone in small-town shops, turned the newborn miracle of powered flight into a homegrown craft.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1907, powered flight was so new it barely existed. The Wright brothers had lifted off at Kitty Hawk only four years earlier, and to most Americans the idea of a person flying was still closer to rumor than reality. There were no aviation schools, no manufacturers to buy a plane from, and no manuals to learn from. Anyone who wanted to fly had to first figure out how to build the thing that would carry them.
This was the age of the mechanic-inventor, when the frontier of technology was open to anyone with tools, nerve, and mechanical intuition. The automobile was young, the motorcycle engine was a marvel of compact power, and a clever tinkerer in a small-town shop could genuinely stand at the leading edge of the possible.
Into that moment stepped Ben T. Epps of Georgia. Born in 1888 in Oconee County and educated in Clarke County, he attended Georgia Tech and became exactly the kind of self-taught craftsman the era produced — a man who would teach himself to fly by building the aircraft himself.
People & events
Epps designed, built, and flew the first airplane in the state of Georgia — the 1907 Monoplane, constructed in his shop on Washington Street in Athens. He earned the title "Georgia's First in Flight" not by buying his way into the sky but by hammering it together on a workbench.
He never stopped iterating. The marker records a steady progression of new aircraft — designed and flown in 1909, 1911, 1916, 1924, and 1930 — each one a fresh attempt to improve on the last. His 1924 Monoplane captures his whole philosophy in its numbers: it weighed only 350 pounds, spanned 25 feet, and was powered by a two-cylinder motorcycle engine, sipping fuel at 25 miles per gallon while cruising around 60 miles per hour.
That plane was built, in his words, for the average man — easy to fly and cheap to operate, a flying machine imagined as something ordinary people might actually use. In 1917 Epps opened an airport at this very location and ran a flying service for the next twenty years. His story ends here, too: in 1937 he died of injuries suffered when his light biplane suffered engine failure and crashed on takeoff at his own field.
Its place in the American story
Epps belongs to the pioneering, largely self-taught generation of American aviators who carried powered flight out of the laboratory and into the life of the country. In the years after Kitty Hawk, it was often lone experimenters in small workshops — not big companies — who kept pushing the new technology forward, and Epps was Georgia's own example of that national breed.
His dream of an airplane "designed for the average man," light and inexpensive, anticipated one of the enduring ambitions of American aviation: to make flight not just a spectacle but something practical and widely accessible. That idea — the personal airplane, the everyday flying machine — would echo through the decades of aviation development that followed.
And the airfield he founded in 1917 is part of a larger story, too. All across the country, private flying fields opened by individual enthusiasts became the seeds of the nation's aviation infrastructure. A one-man operation started by a self-taught flier was exactly how many American communities first touched the age of flight.
If you visit
This site is where Epps built his life around the sky — the location of the airfield he opened in 1917 and ran for two decades, and the ground where his story came to its end in 1937. Stand here and let the ordinariness of the place sink in; the miracle of early flight didn't happen only over famous beaches, but at modest fields like this one, tended by determined local people.
Think about the scale of what he attempted with what he had. A 350-pound airplane powered by a motorcycle engine, built by hand in a shop on Washington Street in Athens — it's a reminder that the dawn of aviation ran on ingenuity far more than on money. That combination of daring and craftsmanship is the real thing to carry away from this stop.
For anyone traveling through Athens and Clarke County with an interest in how America learned to fly, this is a quietly moving pause. Give a thought to the self-taught inventor who kept building better airplanes year after year, chasing a homegrown dream of flight for the common person — and who gave Georgia its first wings.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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