Description: Charles A. Lindbergh Historic Site
1620 Lindbergh Drive Southwest,
Little Falls,
MN 56345,
THE HOUSE
We were enjoying the museum but were aware that we would be called when the next tour of the house was due as that was the one we were on. Numbers in the house are limited and you can only go into the house as part of a guided tour.
As we walked over to the house with our guide she stopped on the way to tell us something about the young Charles along the lines of the bits I have already mentioned. She told us he was not a great student but loved to invent and build and mess about on the river and with machinery. He was driving at the age of about thirteen and flying solo by the age of 20.
She showed us a small duck pond that the young Charles had created using cement for the ducks to use which still is there and holds water today; it is not beautiful but did the job and has not fallen apart.
The house has much of the original furniture in there and each room has a story. The kitchen has a groove in the floor where Charles scarped a coal bucket across it. There was also a hole in the wall where he would hide his treasures when they left the house in the winter months that used to have a secret door.
It was a rather odd house with hall that had so many doors leading from it that could confuse visitors. Charles liked to sleep in the extension at the back with a view of the river; he did this even in winter which must have been really cold with no heating.
The other rooms were as they had been in the Lindbergh’s time with all original pieces of furniture and other bits.
Even as a young boy Charles would be responsible for cutting the logs and keeping the huge boiler under the house going. This boiler was huge and filled half the basement, it looked like it belonged in a factory rather than a house.
Also under the house in the garage is the fully restored car that the young Charles drive his mother across the states in. It had been taken apart to build his first plane ‘Jenny; but enthusiasts have restored it back to its original condition. You can’t imagine someone allowing a thirteen year old to drive it as it was huge and I suspect he could barely see out of the front windscreen. I don’t expect it was an automatic either but I may be wrong and in the olden days gears were complicated as they were NOT synchromesh and you had to double de clutch to change gear! I have tried and it is really difficult to do so if he managed this he was indeed very skillful.
Charles Lindbergh returned to see the house and said "I can even connect the Mississippi, here, with aviation. One day, before the First World War began, when I was upstairs playing in our house, I heard an unusually loud engine noise. I ran to the window and climbed out onto the roof. There was an airplane flying upriver, below the treetops on the banks. I learned that it was carrying passengers from a field near Little Falls. Of course I wanted to fly in it, but my mother said that it would be much too expensive and dangerous."
Little did she know at that time that her son would become one of the most famous aviators in history.
Sadly he and his wife had their son kidnapped in 1932 and sadly despite a huge ransom being paid for information his body was found some weeks later accidently.
The Lindbergh family then moved to Europe and lived in Kent for some years to escape the press harassment. He led an interesting life and pre WWII he was advising the Germans on the aircraft and knew what they had was superior to the allies as war broke out.
He became very unpopular as he made speeches against America joining WWII as he felt it was not their war. He also appears to have been somewhat of a racist Lindbergh said certain races have "demonstrated superior ability in the design, manufacture, and operation of machines." He further said, "The growth of our western civilization has been closely related to this superiority." This didn’t win him many fans either.
He did take an active role in flying in the Pacific after the US joined the war and those pilots who flew with him praised his skills as a pilot and his patriotism.
After the war from the 1960s Lindbergh didn’t just sit back and do nothing he was a great traveler and also very keep on conservation and nature and spent his life promoting conservation around the world.
All in all we found this a really interesting and I learned a place to visit and I learned a lot about Charles Lindbergh and his life beyond the famous flight.
The guide was excellent and told us lots of little stories about Lindbergh as a boy and things that happened in the house and so on. She was not only well informed but made everything very interesting and at times quite amusing too.
The museum alone is worth a visit but if you can do both then do as it makes it feel quite personal and almost as though you are looking through a window into his life as a youngster. It looks like a pretty normal house from the outside but once inside the secrets are all revealed by the guide and you really feel you know Lindbergh a lot better.
RECOMMENDED?
Yes indeed I love visiting places like this where you find out so much about the people who lived there. It makes them so much more of a real person rather than just a name you read about in history.
If you are passing through Minnesota near Little Falls make a short detour and find this place as you will be impressed I assure you.
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