International Forest of Friendship

Atchison was the birthplace of Amelia Earhart, and this living forest is the town's tribute to everyone who has reached for the sky. The International Forest of Friendship was a gift to the nation on its two hundredth birthday in nineteen seventy-six, created together by the city of Atchison and the Ninety-Nines, the international organization of women pilots that Earhart helped found. It was begun in her hometown in that bicentennial year.

The forest holds trees from all fifty states and from dozens of countries. Winding through it is a walk called Memory Lane, its concrete embedded with granite plaques honoring more than twelve hundred people who shaped aviation and spaceflight, from the Wright Brothers and Charles Lindbergh to Sally Ride and Chuck Yeager. One tree was grown from a seed that Apollo Fourteen astronaut Stuart Roosa carried all the way around the Moon and back.