New Mexico has seen its share of important moments in aviation history, not the least of which was the 1982 landing of the Space Shuttle Columbia at the White Sands Space Harbor. But back in 1928 a more startling landing occurred.

More in a moment . . .

The Hobbs of 1928 was a bustling, booming, but somewhat isolated, oil town. In September of that year a pilot named Amelia Earhart and her silver Avian airplane dropped into the New Mexico town -- literally.

Amelia Earhart was enroute to the first round-trip transcontinental U.S. flight by a woman when she ran into trouble over Texas. Somewhere near Fort Worth a strong wind swiped an aerial chart pinned to her skirt. Lost, confused and quickly running out of fuel, Earhart struggled over the Southwest desert before spotting the modest lights of Hobbs.

They say that Amelia broke every traffic law in Hobbs as she landed and rolled her tandem biplane up East Broadway and into a gas station. Some townspeople thought the haggard pilot might be Charles Lindbergh. After enjoying all the hospitality that Hobbs could offer, Earhart gassed up her silver bird, fixed a flat tire and took off for the West Coast.

It was in 1927 -- the year before the Hobbs incident -- that Amelia Earhart flew across the Atlantic Ocean. And soon after her visit to Hobbs, Earhart became the first pilot to fly alone from Hawaii to California, over more than 2,400 miles of ocean. Eventually, she tried the round-the-world flight from which she never returned.

To learn more about New Mexico's varied history in flight and space, visit the Confederate Air Force Museum in Hobbs and the Space Center in Alamogordo.