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Aurora and the Pilot's Grave

added01 September 2026

On 17 April 1897 a Dallas newspaper ran a short item: an airship had passed over the Texas town of Aurora at dawn, clipped Judge Proctor's windmill, exploded — and the body of the pilot, "not an inhabitant of this world", had been found in the wreck. The pilot, said the item, was buried in the town cemetery. It appeared at the height of the nationwide "mystery airship" wave of 1896–97, before aviation existed. Its author, S. E. Haydon, was the local correspondent, and the town was dying: the railway had gone elsewhere and the boll weevil had taken the cotton. That the item was an advertisement for a dying town is the most convincing reading of it. The grave has been looked for more than once. The Texas Historical Commission put a marker at the cemetery retelling the story; digging is not permitted.

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