By Cecil Hicks
If you’ve ever flown a kite, thought about flying a kite, or enjoyed watching kites fly in steady offshore breezes, then you need to visit the World Kite Museum in Long Beach, Washington, on the Long Beach Peninsula.
The peninsula has the distinction of being the kite-flying mecca of the world with some 28 miles of continuous sandy beaches along the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Each August, a week-long Washington State International Kite Festival at Long Beach (the world’s largest) attracts some 15,000 kite-flying enthusiasts.
The World Kite Museum is open year-round and manned by volunteers. It’s North America’s only museum dedicated exclusively to the history of kites, kite-makers, and famous kite flyers.
As people stroll past various kite exhibits, they’ll learn about the history of kite flying, which had its humble beginning in Southeast Asia more than 2000 years ago. One theory claims  that kite flying began when a Chinese rice farmer tied his conical hat to a string and sent it aloft.
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The museum collection includes some 1600 different types of kites collected from countries around the world. While some kites take up an entire display wall, others can be held in the palm of your hand.
One of the more famous kites is an original Silas Conyne high-altitude kite that set a world height record of 3751 feet during the 1904 World Fair in St. Louis. At one of the large Asian fighting kite displays, you can feel the ground-in glass imbedded in a spool of string used to cut the string of an opponent’s kite during battles.
There are also a number of working kites.
They include some that were used on military battlefields for spying, for signaling troops, and sending radio antennas aloft from Navy lifeboats adrift at sea.
The museum provides kite-making workshops, group tours, and sells kites in its gift shop along with postcards, posters, and kite-flying books. There ’s also a special kiting Hall of Fame wall honoring some 40 inductees that have contributed to the world of kite flying. This year features a display of the famous kite flyer Ben Franklin, who conducted electricity experiments with a key tied on a kite string sent aloft during an electrical storm. |
As you leave the World Kite Museum, don’t be surprised if one of the employees tells you to “go fly a kite” because they mean it—literally.
The World Kite Museum is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily Memorial Day through Labor Day, and open the same hours Monday through Friday from September through May. The museum is located at 303 Sid Snyder Drive, Long Beach, Washington. (360-642-4020; www.worldkitemuseum.com).
Northwest Travel May/June 2007
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