Follow the Arrows

                         
       All over the country, 70-foot concrete
arrows can be found in remote locations.
Follow them, and they'll point you out of
the desert.


They come courtesy of the US Postal Services Air Force and will point you all the way across the continental United States. They were constructed in 1924 to guide postal planes in the right direction as
they carried mail from coast to coast.

These old planes couldn't rely on radios at that time, so they used these arrows, along with beacon towers, to navigate.


The arrows and beacons bisect the United States from San Francisco to New York City.



The towers were 50 feet tall and fixed with gas lights that could be seen from 10 miles away, helping lost pilots find their way. 

This is a model of the arrows and towers in their heyday.

World War II brought new advances in
radio technology effectively making the
towers and arrows system obsolete.

 The towers were mostly dismantled, but some of the arrows remain. Is there one near you?

                      List of locations for arrows