Brian Duggan/Nevada AppealThree markers, including the one that commemorates Nevada's first flight, were found recently in an NDOT yard west of Carson City.
One hundred years ago, Ivy Baldwin made history when his biplane took off at the old Raycraft Ranch in north Carson City.
That flight - Nevada's first and at the time a record-breaker in terms of its elevation - was commemorated 35 years ago by local aviation enthusiast Hazel Hohn, who helped establish a state historical marker along U.S. 395 where Glen Eagles now stands. And about nine years ago, that marker went missing.
Today, it's been found.
The Nevada Appeal received a tip from a reader during the weekend that the missing historical marker was located in a yard operated by the Nevada Department of Transportation just north of Highway 50 overlooking the Costco.
The marker, celebrating the first air flight in Nevada on June 23, 1910, was found resting on the desert floor, slightly rusted, along with two other missing historical markers for the Washo Tribe and Cave Rock in Douglas County.
Hohn's daughter, Carol Hohn, has been looking for the marker ever since it went missing some nine years ago, likely amid the U.S. 395 widening project.
"My mom worked so hard on it," Hohn said, adding others had lent their time to search for it, too. "So I'm so glad it's going to be put back up where it belongs."
Mara Jones, the architectural historian for the State Historic Preservation Office, said a crew will pick up the markers on Thursday. She said the state will be able to use the text plates, saving the state several hundred dollars or more in replacement costs.
It took Hazel Hohn about three years to establish the marker, which was erected in 1974.
"After all my mom's hard work she deserves the recognition," Hohn said in an e-mail Monday. "Yipee!"
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