City of Atchison

The Amelia Earhart Memorial Bridge shines at night in aesthetic lighting. 

The Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum.

Just about an hour north of Topeka, sitting on the banks of the Missouri River, Atchison is home to an international legend and a continuing inspiration to young women considering going into the sciences, technology, engineering and mechanical career fields.

To get to Atchison, birthplace of Amelia Earhart, K-4 out of Topeka offers wide open views of the horizon as drivers pass the farmland Kansas is so famous for. Or the Glacial Hills Scenic Byway, that runs along 63 miles of K-7 north and south of Atchison, has landscaped scenery to admire. Entering Atchison, the highway becomes the Skyway Highway.  Stay on the Skyway Highway and you end up at the Amelia Earhart Memorial Bridge, a beautiful 2,500-foot tied-arch structure with wide lanes, bike paths and aesthetic lighting, which is a recently-completed joint project of the Kansas and Missouri DOTs.

Above, a tall Amelia Earhart impersonator
 walks along downtown during the annual
Amelia Earhart festival. Below, the riverfront
is packed with people enjoying the festival.

But the main attraction in Atchison is its distinction as the birthplace of Amelia Earhart, which is celebrated annually during Visit Atchison’s Amelia Earhart Festival.  The festival, which this year is July 20 and 21, celebrates spirit of legendary aviatrix Amelia Earhart with a downtown music, food and crafts fair, star-filled outdoor concert, children’s activities, carnival, awards and honors, Earhart research and literature, music on the beautiful Riverfront, aerobatic performances and the “Concert in the Sky” fireworks show.

This year’s festival celebrates the 90^th anniversary of Earhart becoming the first woman to make a solo round trip flight across the United States.  That year, she was also the first woman to make the trip across the Atlantic Ocean as a passenger. 

In addition to food, music, sights and speakers, the festival also features a fly-in and air show and tours of the historic Santa Fe Depot and of course, an open house at Earhart’s birthplace overlooking the Missouri River.

Motor on up to Atchison anytime, but plan to visit during the celebration of a Kansas hero, innovator and trail blazer who truly embodied ‘to the stars and beyond.’