"Cowtown Takes Flight," an exhibit at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, features 45 photos from UTA Libraries' Special Collections Department that document DFW's aviation history.
The "Cowtown Takes Flight" exhibit highlights the social history and key moments in the development of aviation in North Texas through photographs and artifacts, said Abigail Hofbauer, the museum's marketing manager.
"The exhibit focuses on the key players and events in aviation history," she said. "People like Roland Garros, whose first powered flight was in Fort Worth in 1911; the Women Air Force Service Pilots who did training here in World War II; and all of the different airfields and military bases that have been here."
Some of the artifacts include the fuselage of a Bell 505 Jet Ranger X helicopter, the plexiglass top turret dome from a World War II B-24 bomber, flight suites, airplane models, historical documents and a Southwest Airlines flight attendant uniform from the 1970s.
"The photographs and the archival materials in the exhibition provide the context to the history," said Kera Newby, director of special collections and archives at UTA. "It shows the real people involved in the evolution of and the relationship between Fort Worth and aviation. It is putting a face to a story."
Throughout the 12,000-square-foot exhibit space, photographs from the Star-Telegram Collection archived at UTA Libraries are prominently featured. Sara Pezzoni, UTA photo collections coordinator, said she was struck by the photos and documents that told the story of the 1981 Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) strikehttps://library.uta.edu/digitalgallery/search?mefibs-form-mini-search-search_api_views_fulltext=PATCO&mefibs-form-mini-search-sort_by=search_api_relevance&mefibs-form-mini-search-sort_by=search_api_relevance&mefibs-form-mini-search-items_per_page=48&mefibs-form-mini-search-mefibs_block_id=mini_search.
"I think that the PATCO strike was a pretty prominent piece of aviation history that happened at DFW Airport," Pezzoni said. "It resonated with us the most because it highlighted an important part of our collection, the Texas Labor Archives."
The Texas Labor Archives housed at UTA Libraries contain materials from hundreds of union locals and labor councils, statewide labor organizations, union political groups and personal papers of union officials.
