Best History Day Trip

For most of her early life, Amelia Earhart lived with her grandparents at 223 N. Terrace in Atchison, Kansas. Because her father, Edwin Stanton Earhart, traveled so much for his railroad job, her grandparents, Judge Alfred Otis and Amelia Harres Otis, cared for Amelia and her sister, Muriel, much of the time. They owned a wood-frame house overlooking the Missouri River, and Amelia, born there on July 27, 1897, considered the dwelling her home. Now converted into a museum for the aviatrix (thanks to a bequest of $100,000 from Dr. Eugene J. Bribach), the home owes its success to the Ninety-Nines, the International Organization of Licensed Women Pilots, which took over the home in 1984. The Earhart museum won the Kansas Historical Society's first-place Nyle J. Miller Award in 1997 for its magnificent restoration. Today, a visitor can tour the National Historic Site, watch the muddy Missouri roll and wonder if it was this home, perched far above the river, that inspired Amelia Earhart to want to go even higher.