Dayton, Ohio: the birthplace of aviation, in the Wikivoyage guide

Dayton calls itself the Gem City and bills itself as the birthplace of aviation: the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, lived here and perfected the design of the first practical aircraft. The Wikivoyage guide counts about 141,000 people in the city, in the Miami and Scioto basins of Ohio, in 2016, and 1,075,000 in the Dayton-Springfield-Sidney metro area. Like the rest of Ohio, it has four distinct seasons: cold winters, hot and humid summers, and storms in spring and autumn that can produce tornadoes.

A national park in several pieces

Dayton is home to one of the few multi-site national parks in the United States, the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park. It includes the Wright-Dunbar Interpretive Center, the Wright Cycle Company building, the Huffman Prairie Flying Field Interpretive Center, the Paul Laurence Dunbar State Memorial and Carillon Historical Park, which houses the original 1905 Wright Flyer III.

The Wright Cycle Company complex is two adjoining buildings: the Hoover Block, also known as the Wright-Dunbar Interpretive Center, which is the main visitor center for the park, and the Wright Cycle Company building itself. The Wrights opened a bicycle repair shop in 1892, alongside their printing business. From 1895 to 1897 both businesses were at 22 S Williams St, the fourth of five locations of their bicycle business.

Huffman Prairie, on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, is where the brothers perfected their flying skills in 1904 and 1905. The guide warns that because it is on an Air Force base it may close without notice.

National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. Photo: J. Miers, user Jtesla16, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The Air Force museum

Wright-Patterson is a significant part of the local economy, with about 23,000 employees, and the reason behind most tourism. It is home to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, which the guide calls the world's largest military aviation museum, with over 300 aircraft on display from the earliest days of flight to modern prototypes. It says the museum is interesting even for people who are not aviation fans. Highlights include a B-2 stealth bomber, one of the bombers that dropped atomic bombs on Japan in World War II, several former Air Force One presidential aircraft, and Mercury and Apollo space capsules.

Other places

• Carillon Park is an outdoor historical museum of original historic homes moved there, and holds artifacts from NCR and the Wright brothers; the guide compares it to Michigan's Greenfield Village, though smaller.
• SunWatch is an interpretive Indian village and archeological park.
• The Dayton International Peace Museum is devoted to continuing efforts to achieve world peace, and honors the 1995 accords that ended the three-year war in Bosnia.
• The Dayton Art Institute and the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery, a children's science museum, sit among the city's other museums.
• Miami Valley Trails offer over 300 miles (480 km) of bicycle and shared-use paths across ten counties around Dayton and Springfield; the Little Miami Scenic Trail is the most popular.
• Two churches are noted as historic: Sacred Heart, completed in 1895, and St. Mary's, completed in 1909.

Dayton City Hall. Photo: Tysto, public domain.

Events and campuses

The Dayton Air Show is among the city's festivals, alongside Greek and Celtic festivals.

Dayton Air Show. Photo: MrGuilt, CC BY 2.0.

The University of Dayton and Wright State University, in nearby Fairborn, field NCAA Division I teams. The University of Dayton's UD Arena hosts the "First Four" round of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. The Air Force Institute of Technology, on the base, is the Air Force's main technical school for graduate degrees.

Getting there

Dayton lies where Interstates 70 and 75 meet, just north of the city near the airport. The guide says Cincinnati is under an hour away on I-75, and Columbus about an hour on I-70. Before August 2013 the airport had no public bus service. The guide also notes the local habit of cutting pizza into many small squares. From Dayton, it suggests day trips to Yellow Springs and to Lebanon, home of the Fort Ancient archaeological site, one of the largest Native American historical sites in the United States.

Sources

• Photographs, each under the licence in its caption: J. Miers (user Jtesla16), CC BY-SA 4.0; Tysto, public domain; MrGuilt, CC BY 2.0. Changed here: the guide is condensed and rewritten, and listings, phone numbers, opening hours, prices and seven photographs, among them sculptures, a costumed mascot and stained glass, are left out.
• Wikivoyage, "Dayton" (https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Dayton), by its contributors, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/); rewritten in hubnx's own words.