Brooks Air Force Base Hangar 9

San Antonio, TX

Built about 1890 by builder T.R. Hertzberg to a design by architect M.T. Eckles, this late Victorian house was purchased in 1909 by Judge Sidney J. Brooks, first judge of the 57th District Court. His son, Sidney Brooks Jr., became one of the first U.S. cadets killed while training for World War I aviation duty in 1917. San Antonio's Brooks Air Force Base was named in the young flier's honor.

San Antonio, TX

San Antonio was a cradle of American military aviation, and this hangar at Brooks Air Force Base honors astronaut Lt. Col. Edward H. White II, the first American to walk in space, tethered to his Gemini craft in June 1965. White died in the January 1967 Apollo launch-pad fire while training for the first Moon flight; his own father had learned to fly at nearby Hangar 9, as did Charles Lindbergh. That standard WWI-era hangar once sheltered Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" trainers, linking the pioneers of powered flight to the astronauts who followed.

San Antonio, TX

Founded by the remarkable Stinson family, this field has seen aviation grow from barnstormers to jets. Katherine Stinson learned to fly in 1912 to fund her music studies and became the fourth licensed woman pilot in the U.S.; she and sister Marjorie soon trained American and Canadian military fliers here. The family leased this land in 1916, and the field served as a civil airport, a WPA-improved terminal, and an Army Air Corps training base through two world wars — Charles Lindbergh himself flew out of it.

San Antonio, TX

Cowboys called it "Devil's Rope," and Texas cattlemen wanted nothing to do with barbed wire until a showman named John Ware Gates staged a dramatic proof on San Antonio's Military Plaza in the late 1870s. He penned frenzied longhorns behind a barbed-wire corral, prodded them with torches, and watched the flimsy-looking fence hold as skeptics lost their bets. Orders soon outran supply, and Gates went on to build wire and steel plants and to invest in the Spindletop oil boom.