Weatherford: Hometown of a Moon Walker

Weatherford, a modest Custer County seat of about twelve thousand people, claims one of the more remarkable distinctions of any Route Sixty-Six town. Thomas Stafford was born here in nineteen thirty. He grew up in Weatherford, graduated from the United States Naval Academy, became a test pilot, and was selected by NASA in nineteen sixty-two as one of the second class of astronauts.

Stafford flew four times in space. He commanded Gemini Nine, Apollo Ten, and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the first joint mission between the United States and the Soviet Union, docking with a Soviet spacecraft in orbit in nineteen seventy-five. The Stafford Air and Space Museum in Weatherford holds a large collection of spacecraft and aviation artifacts, including the Gemini Six capsule Stafford flew and full-scale replicas of Apollo hardware. It remains an underappreciated stop on the Route Sixty-Six drive west.