From the cockpit of the Waco GXE, a pilot gazes across the patchwork plains of North Dakota and wonders what the skies looked like in the early 1900s when pilots delivered mail by aircraft. Scanning the controls, the pilot imagines the aviators who flew before him. Were they worried about strong gusts of wind or unpredictable weather? What was it like to see a crowd of pioneers waiting beside the landing strip, eager to receive letters from loved ones from afar?

In North Dakota, air mail service premiered in 1928, when Northwest Airways of St. Paul added a stop in Pembina to one of its routes. The service soon extended, and on June 12, 1928, over 3,000 people gathered at the new Hector field in Fargo to welcome its first commercial air stop.

In 1989, North Dakota celebrated its centennial anniversary and aviators prepared the Waco GXE for flight to honor those pilots who had pioneered the wide-open prairie sky and developed routes across the state in order to deliver mail to communities who were otherwise largely disconnected to the rest of the world. Organized by the Dakota Territory Air Museum, early-period aircraft like the Waco GXE and 1943 Boeing Stearman A-75 biplanes visited 100 airports in North Dakota, collecting mail bags of envelopes adorned with the official centennial stamp. On some occasions, citizens met the planes with wagons, antique mail trucks, Model T’s, and horses.

Also notable, the OX-5 engine installed in the Waco GXE before you was a popular engine for trainer planes like the JN4 Jenny during WWI.