Balloon Museum: The Men Who Crossed the Atlantic in a Basket
Near Albuquerque, New Mexico
The museum on the north edge of Albuquerque is named for two local men who in August nineteen seventy-eight became the first balloonists to cross the Atlantic Ocean without stopping. Ben Abruzzo and Maxie Anderson, along with a third crew member named Larry Newman, flew the Double Eagle Two from Maine to France in one hundred thirty-seven hours, crossing more than three thousand miles of open ocean in a gas balloon. The flight won them international acclaim and set the stage for Albuquerque's identity as the world capital of hot-air ballooning, home to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, the largest annual balloon gathering on earth.
The museum opened October first, two thousand five, and occupies fifty-nine thousand square feet with exhibits covering lighter-than-air flight from its origins in eighteenth-century France to modern high-altitude scientific balloons. It sits just outside the Balloon Fiesta grounds.
