June 17, 2026 • 9 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, nearly ninety years after Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific, the fascination surrounding her life has never faded. Yet one of the most revealing clues about who she was isn't found in a cockpit or a flight log. It's a leather coat preserved in a museum in Wyoming.
Our regular contributor Ashley Hlebinsky shares the story behind the jacket and explains how a single artifact can help us better understand the woman behind one of the greatest legends in American history.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories.
Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across
the Atlantic Ocean, and she continues to inspire generations with
a pioneering spirit and her courage. Here to tell another
story is our frequent contributor, Ashley Lebinski. Take it away, Ashley.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Only a short time ago, Amelia Earhart checked over every
detail of her eighty thousand dollar flying laboratory in preparation
for around the world flight. This was to have been
her greatest achievement, a sky dash of twenty eight thousand miles.
With her husband, George Palmer Putnam on Wright, she discussed
the hazardous course which had been plotted for her by
Fred Noonan, the navigator who embarked with Miss Earhart upon
(00:54):
this great flight, a flight which was to have marked
her retirement to aeronautical research.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
In the small town of Cody, Wyoming, it's got about
ten thousand people, there is this giant forty acre property,
and on that property is a network of museums. In
that in and of itself is huge. There's a seven
acre roof, and one of the museums is the Buffalo
Bill Museum and what's fascinating is one of the last
(01:21):
artifacts you may expect to see on display in a
museum about Buffalo Bill is a coat owned not by
one of his performers, like Annie Oakley, but by a
different type of pioneer. When you look at this coat,
it's very ordinary. It's brown leather, it has a yellowish
(01:42):
collar and a lot of creases revealing its age. But
it's in this kind of ordinary coat that it reveals
the life of someone extraordinary. Amelia Earhart Amelia Earhart was
born in Kansas in eighteen ninety seven, and she made
her first plane ride in nineteen twenty. She took flying
(02:04):
lessons and she purchased her first airplane that following year.
In nineteen twenty two, she flew that plane to fourteen
thousand feet, setting a record for the highest altitude then
flown by a female pilot. And six years later, Earhart
made history by becoming the first woman to successfully cross
the Atlantic Ocean.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
I got down without any trouble and taxied to the
front door of a surprised farmer cottage. After receiving a
real Irish welcome, I took a paramount plane to London
and there I received a real English.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Welcome, and in this instance she was part of a
crew that did include two male copilots. But in nineteen
thirty two, just five years after Charles Lindbergh did so,
Earhart again made aviation history, becoming the first woman and
only the second person to complete a solo transatlantic crossing
a feet through which Hungerss gave her the distinguished Flying Cross.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Boring into the Oakland Airport, she brings to a triumphant
finished her twenty four hundred mile hop from Hawaii after
eighteen hours in the air, ten thousand hair the end
of the apicoat Bight, and the Lady Lindy spy it
into a perfect land with two records, the first woman
to fly at the Pacific. I'm the first person to
fly a solo.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Around nineteen thirty four, she and her husband, who is
a publisher named George Palmer Putnam, traveled to Wyoming and
there they visited a remote ranch which is near this
small town called Matitzi. And now there's not much in
Matitzi right now, just a couple of bars and a
chocolate teer. But back then even more remote, and this
ranch they visited was owned by a man named Carl Dunrude,
(03:50):
and the ranch that he had was the Double d Ranch,
which is still around, and they spent several weeks with
him fishing, riding and camping. Now you might be asking
yourself why did they go to Wyoming in this remote town,
And that's because Putnam and Carl Dunrude had a long
history of adventures together. Carl served as Putnam's hunting guide,
(04:11):
an outfitter, and Yellowstone and he even accompanied Putnam on
a specimen collecting expedition to Greenland in nineteen twenty six.
When Carl Dunward purchased his property, it had already included
this former gold mining town of Kerwin, but the town
was abandoned around nineteen oh seven following a really bad avalanche,
and so Dunard's plan was to buy what remained of
(04:33):
Kerwin so that he could build his Dude Ranch nine
miles down river, and that's what he did. And now
today you actually can still go visit the Double D
Ranch when there's about a half a dozen cabins where
guests can stay and enjoy everything Wyomi has to offer,
and they can also stay in the cabin where Amelia
was staying back in the nineteen thirties. What's interesting about
(04:53):
Wyoming for someone like Amelia Earhart is that it offered
something that aviation really could not. It was a town
where there were no reporters, there were no schedules, she
wasn't expected to do anything. She was just able to
participate in ranch life, kind of in its finest. So
they fell in love with Wyoming so much that Earhart
(05:15):
and her husband decided that they wanted to build a
home there. And by nineteen thirty six, so just short,
you know, a couple of years after her first trip,
those plans were underway. So Putnam communicated with Dunrout in
a series of letters that exist, and construction began in
nineteen thirty seven, and it was only four logs high
when Dunrude got a call from Putnam to stop building.
(05:39):
And that's, of course, because in nineteen thirty seven, on
July second, that is when Amelia Earhart and her navigator
Fred Noonan vanished over the Pacific Ocean during her attempt
to become the first woman to fly around the world.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Them to a waiting world came news of disaster as
the plane failed to reach tiny Howland Island in mid Pacific,
a British writer, the pot and the Navy sped to
the search. The battleship Colorado, steaming up from Honolulu under
force draft from California, the aircraft carrier Lexington, with three
thousand men and seventy two planes aboard, races into the
distant Pacific to join the greatest searching hobby in the
(06:15):
history of aviation.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
And today that structure still exists, but only a few
logs remain and a lot of visitors. They make the
track and they can kind of see there's a plaquer.
They can see where Amelia was planning to live during
the summers, but before she disappeared, she started sending her
personal effects to dun Rude to kind of hold onto them,
and he later recalled. Before Amelia left on her last flight,
(06:41):
she sent many of her personal belongings to be stored
at the Double D Ranch until she could enjoy them
at her cabin. And one of these items was the
leather flight jacket she had used in her flight across
the Atlantic. It showed much where because she also used
it during the time she was roughing it at the ranch.
This coat was one of several of her personal effects
(07:01):
that she set back to Wyoming, and Dunrud held on
to all of those effects, and thirty years later he
stopped by the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, which
was called the Buffalo Bill Historical Center back there because
he wanted to make sure Amelia's legacy, especially at legacy
in Wyoming, was preserved forever. And so he sat down
with the director and he's like, I want to show
(07:23):
you something. And when he showed it to the director,
the director at the time said that, you know, he
instantly knew what it was and that it was Earhart's
flight jacket, and Dunruth said that he wanted to donate
it to the center. What's great about the flight jacket
and being able to tell Amelia's story in Wyoming is
that it's probably at this point one of the few
artifacts that don't kind of talk about her disappearance, but
(07:46):
really it's evidence of a life that extended far beyond that.
And that's what the jacket tells us. It's not how
Amir Earhart died, it's how she lived. And this jacket,
which you can go see at the Buffalo Bill Museum,
it connects two worlds that rarely overlap in the way
that we remember her, the cutting edge of aviation, with
(08:06):
the quiet of the American West, her large public persona,
but also the private individual and this woman who while
chasing the horizon also was starting to plan a summer
home in Wyoming. Not today, the mystery of her disappearance
still captures attention, but in Wyoming, this coat is something
(08:27):
that doesn't require speculation. Her plane is gone, her mystery remains,
but the jacket and the foundation was meant to be
their home tells the rest of the story.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
And a terrific job by the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks as
always to Ashley Lebinski. And she's the former co host
of Discovery Channel's Master of Arms, co founder of the
University of Wyoming College of Laws Firearms Research Center, and
she's also a frequent contributor on our American Stories. And
(09:02):
what a story to tell just when you think you've
known everything about a person and always focused on the
flight and the achievements and my goodness, how else to
know Amelia Earhart. But for those things. She was the
first woman to cross the Atlantic solo, and she was
awarded the Distinguished Flying cross By Congress as a result,
and of course we know about what happened in nineteen
(09:24):
thirty seven, her disappearance and her effort to take that
trip around the world, But that daredevil, that wild lady,
also had a private and personal life, and she found it,
and she found peace, and she found joy in Wyoming,
in the ranching life, and that jacket, in of all places,
Buffalo Bill's Museum reminds us all, as Ashley said, about
(09:49):
not just how she died, but how she lived. The
story of Amelia Earhart's jacket. Here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories.
Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across
the Atlantic Ocean, and she continues to inspire generations with
a pioneering spirit and her courage. Here to tell another
story is our frequent contributor, Ashley Lebinski. Take it away, Ashley.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Only a short time ago, Amelia Earhart checked over every
detail of her eighty thousand dollar flying laboratory in preparation
for around the world flight. This was to have been
her greatest achievement, a sky dash of twenty eight thousand miles.
With her husband, George Palmer Putnam on Wright, she discussed
the hazardous course which had been plotted for her by
Fred Noonan, the navigator who embarked with Miss Earhart upon
(00:54):
this great flight, a flight which was to have marked
her retirement to aeronautical research.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
In the small town of Cody, Wyoming, it's got about
ten thousand people, there is this giant forty acre property,
and on that property is a network of museums. In
that in and of itself is huge. There's a seven
acre roof, and one of the museums is the Buffalo
Bill Museum and what's fascinating is one of the last
(01:21):
artifacts you may expect to see on display in a
museum about Buffalo Bill is a coat owned not by
one of his performers, like Annie Oakley, but by a
different type of pioneer. When you look at this coat,
it's very ordinary. It's brown leather, it has a yellowish
(01:42):
collar and a lot of creases revealing its age. But
it's in this kind of ordinary coat that it reveals
the life of someone extraordinary. Amelia Earhart Amelia Earhart was
born in Kansas in eighteen ninety seven, and she made
her first plane ride in nineteen twenty. She took flying
(02:04):
lessons and she purchased her first airplane that following year.
In nineteen twenty two, she flew that plane to fourteen
thousand feet, setting a record for the highest altitude then
flown by a female pilot. And six years later, Earhart
made history by becoming the first woman to successfully cross
the Atlantic Ocean.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
I got down without any trouble and taxied to the
front door of a surprised farmer cottage. After receiving a
real Irish welcome, I took a paramount plane to London
and there I received a real English.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Welcome, and in this instance she was part of a
crew that did include two male copilots. But in nineteen
thirty two, just five years after Charles Lindbergh did so,
Earhart again made aviation history, becoming the first woman and
only the second person to complete a solo transatlantic crossing
a feet through which Hungerss gave her the distinguished Flying Cross.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Boring into the Oakland Airport, she brings to a triumphant
finished her twenty four hundred mile hop from Hawaii after
eighteen hours in the air, ten thousand hair the end
of the apicoat Bight, and the Lady Lindy spy it
into a perfect land with two records, the first woman
to fly at the Pacific. I'm the first person to
fly a solo.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Around nineteen thirty four, she and her husband, who is
a publisher named George Palmer Putnam, traveled to Wyoming and
there they visited a remote ranch which is near this
small town called Matitzi. And now there's not much in
Matitzi right now, just a couple of bars and a
chocolate teer. But back then even more remote, and this
ranch they visited was owned by a man named Carl Dunrude,
(03:50):
and the ranch that he had was the Double d Ranch,
which is still around, and they spent several weeks with
him fishing, riding and camping. Now you might be asking
yourself why did they go to Wyoming in this remote town,
And that's because Putnam and Carl Dunrude had a long
history of adventures together. Carl served as Putnam's hunting guide,
(04:11):
an outfitter, and Yellowstone and he even accompanied Putnam on
a specimen collecting expedition to Greenland in nineteen twenty six.
When Carl Dunward purchased his property, it had already included
this former gold mining town of Kerwin, but the town
was abandoned around nineteen oh seven following a really bad avalanche,
and so Dunard's plan was to buy what remained of
(04:33):
Kerwin so that he could build his Dude Ranch nine
miles down river, and that's what he did. And now
today you actually can still go visit the Double D
Ranch when there's about a half a dozen cabins where
guests can stay and enjoy everything Wyomi has to offer,
and they can also stay in the cabin where Amelia
was staying back in the nineteen thirties. What's interesting about
(04:53):
Wyoming for someone like Amelia Earhart is that it offered
something that aviation really could not. It was a town
where there were no reporters, there were no schedules, she
wasn't expected to do anything. She was just able to
participate in ranch life, kind of in its finest. So
they fell in love with Wyoming so much that Earhart
(05:15):
and her husband decided that they wanted to build a
home there. And by nineteen thirty six, so just short,
you know, a couple of years after her first trip,
those plans were underway. So Putnam communicated with Dunrout in
a series of letters that exist, and construction began in
nineteen thirty seven, and it was only four logs high
when Dunrude got a call from Putnam to stop building.
(05:39):
And that's, of course, because in nineteen thirty seven, on
July second, that is when Amelia Earhart and her navigator
Fred Noonan vanished over the Pacific Ocean during her attempt
to become the first woman to fly around the world.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Them to a waiting world came news of disaster as
the plane failed to reach tiny Howland Island in mid Pacific,
a British writer, the pot and the Navy sped to
the search. The battleship Colorado, steaming up from Honolulu under
force draft from California, the aircraft carrier Lexington, with three
thousand men and seventy two planes aboard, races into the
distant Pacific to join the greatest searching hobby in the
(06:15):
history of aviation.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
And today that structure still exists, but only a few
logs remain and a lot of visitors. They make the
track and they can kind of see there's a plaquer.
They can see where Amelia was planning to live during
the summers, but before she disappeared, she started sending her
personal effects to dun Rude to kind of hold onto them,
and he later recalled. Before Amelia left on her last flight,
(06:41):
she sent many of her personal belongings to be stored
at the Double D Ranch until she could enjoy them
at her cabin. And one of these items was the
leather flight jacket she had used in her flight across
the Atlantic. It showed much where because she also used
it during the time she was roughing it at the ranch.
This coat was one of several of her personal effects
(07:01):
that she set back to Wyoming, and Dunrud held on
to all of those effects, and thirty years later he
stopped by the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, which
was called the Buffalo Bill Historical Center back there because
he wanted to make sure Amelia's legacy, especially at legacy
in Wyoming, was preserved forever. And so he sat down
with the director and he's like, I want to show
(07:23):
you something. And when he showed it to the director,
the director at the time said that, you know, he
instantly knew what it was and that it was Earhart's
flight jacket, and Dunruth said that he wanted to donate
it to the center. What's great about the flight jacket
and being able to tell Amelia's story in Wyoming is
that it's probably at this point one of the few
artifacts that don't kind of talk about her disappearance, but
(07:46):
really it's evidence of a life that extended far beyond that.
And that's what the jacket tells us. It's not how
Amir Earhart died, it's how she lived. And this jacket,
which you can go see at the Buffalo Bill Museum,
it connects two worlds that rarely overlap in the way
that we remember her, the cutting edge of aviation, with
(08:06):
the quiet of the American West, her large public persona,
but also the private individual and this woman who while
chasing the horizon also was starting to plan a summer
home in Wyoming. Not today, the mystery of her disappearance
still captures attention, but in Wyoming, this coat is something
(08:27):
that doesn't require speculation. Her plane is gone, her mystery remains,
but the jacket and the foundation was meant to be
their home tells the rest of the story.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
And a terrific job by the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks as
always to Ashley Lebinski. And she's the former co host
of Discovery Channel's Master of Arms, co founder of the
University of Wyoming College of Laws Firearms Research Center, and
she's also a frequent contributor on our American Stories. And
(09:02):
what a story to tell just when you think you've
known everything about a person and always focused on the
flight and the achievements and my goodness, how else to
know Amelia Earhart. But for those things. She was the
first woman to cross the Atlantic solo, and she was
awarded the Distinguished Flying cross By Congress as a result,
and of course we know about what happened in nineteen
(09:24):
thirty seven, her disappearance and her effort to take that
trip around the world, But that daredevil, that wild lady,
also had a private and personal life, and she found it,
and she found peace, and she found joy in Wyoming,
in the ranching life, and that jacket, in of all places,
Buffalo Bill's Museum reminds us all, as Ashley said, about
(09:49):
not just how she died, but how she lived. The
story of Amelia Earhart's jacket. Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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