... was actually made at a place that is now called Kill Devil Hills, four miles south of the town of Kitty Hawk. After the flights, the Wrights walked back to Kitty Hawk, where they sent a telegram from the Weather Bureau office to inform their father of their success. There was no settlement at Kill Devil Hills until the1950s, which is why Kitty Hawk became famous as the site of the first powered flight. Wikipedia doesn't tell us whether Kill Devil Hills was known by that name in 1903, but we do know that there is (now, at least) a Big Kill Devil Hill (see below).
Kitty Hawk was established in the early 18th century as Chickahawk. It's about 500 miles, as the crow flies, from the Wright brothers' home in Dayton, Ohio; Wikipedia tells us that they chose it because of the steady winds reported by the US Weather Bureau. Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills are on The Outer Banks – a 200–mile–long (320 km) string of barrier islands and spits off the coast of North Carolina and southeastern Virginia. Kitty Hawk is now linked to the mainland by a road bridge across the Currituck Sound, which was built in the 1930s. The Wright brothers would have had to get there by boat.
A memorial, commemorating the historic flight, was erected on Big Kill Devil Hill in 1932.
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