escapit

Amelia Earhart’s and her husband, George Palmer Putnam had a cabin perhaps a few miles west of Lone Pine, beginning in the 1930s. As it is told, the front window framed Mount Whitney. Her marriage was a brief union that was far from traditional, more like a Hollywood business partnership and a modern open marriage: the pairing of a publicity-seeking genius and the courageous aviation queen.

Although Amelia Earhart’s feminist spirit and 1937 epic air journey earned her an enduring place in history as a record-breaker and a mystery, it was her worldwide publicity campaign–the brainchild of her husband–that propelled her permanently onto the world’s stage and into its heart.

 Amelia’s renown has grown as the years pass, but the name of her husband, –a flamboyant publishing magnate who gave up his family’s business in New York to manage his wife’s career –is now forgotten.

    In 1937, Earhart made her second try at an around-the-world trip. Her first ended in failure in March of that year when she badly damaged her plane while taking off from Hawaii. Then on July 2, during her second attempt, Earhart’s plane disappeared somewhere near tiny Howland Island in the Pacific. In addition to the U.S. government’s air and sea search for her, Putnam enlisted some help of his own.

He contacted his wife’s friend, the salty flier Jacqueline Cochran, in a desperate hope that her clairvoyant powers could help. Although Cochran said that Earhart and her navigator were still alive and provided a precise position for the plane wreck, no definitive evidence has ever been found.

 Putnam, obsessed with finding her, spent months tracking down every lead and exhausted his bank account before he gave up.

He continued to promote his wife and her achievements in books and lectures, making his living that way. He completed the book she had been working on when she disappeared and named it “Last Flight.” 

 Does anyone have any information about their Lone Pine residence? Does anyone have photographs? Is it still standing?

Amelia Earhart in Lone Pine CA.