Amelia Earhart broke a transcontinental speed record 90 years ago, in July 1933, by flying her signature red Lockheed Vega from Los Angeles to New Jersey in just 17 hours, seven and a half minutes. Earlier that year, Earhart had flown as an observer on a Northwest Airways winter flight across the U.S., testing the possibilities of a “Northern Transcontinental” route.
Because those early airplanes couldn’t reach high altitudes, they weaved through dangerous peaks and the erratic weather patterns that mountain ranges helped create. One co-pilot remembers the journey as “seat-of-the-pants flying across the Dakota and Montana plains and through, over and around the Western mountain ranges.”
