A Boeing 737 Freedom Plane is taking nine founding documents on a cross-country tour to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary.
This will be the first time the documents will be displayed, with the exhibitions running at eight locations from sea to shining sea between Friday and Aug. 16.
Tickets to see the documents will be free to the public at each tour stop, the National Archives said.
The nine documents being carried by the Freedom Plane, according to the tour’s website, are:
• An 1823 engraved copy of the Declaration of Independence commissioned by Secretary of State and future President John Quincy Adams
• The 1774 Articles of Association that called for a boycott of British goods.
• The 1778 oaths of allegiance to the fledgling country taken by future President George Washington as well as fellow Founding Fathers Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr — three separate documents.
• The 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended America’s War of Independence from Great Britain.
• The 1787 secret printing of a draft of the U.S. Constitution.
• The voting records of state delegates to ratify the Constitution.
• The 1789 Senate markup of what would become the Bill of Rights.
The plane left Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport for Kansas City, Missouri, on Monday.
The exhibitions will start at the National World War I Museum and Memorial on Friday and will run through March 22, then at the Atlanta History Center from March 27 through April 12, the National Archives said.
After that, the tour will stop at the University of Southern California Fisher Museum of Art in Los Angeles from April 17 through May 3, then the Houston Museum of Natural Science from May 8-25 and the History Colorado Center in Denver from May 28 through June 14.
The documents will spend America’s 250th birthday at the HistoryMiami Museum, where they will be displayed from June 20 through July 5, the National Archives said.
After that, the tour goes to the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Dearborn, Michigan, from July 9-26 before finishing at Seattle’s Museum of History & Industry from July 30 through Aug. 16.
The tour was inspired by the Freedom Train, which carried national historic documents and artifacts throughout the country for America’s bicentennial anniversary in 1976.
“It really is the best gift that we can give younger generations of Americans to have that sense of America. The National Archives has accomplished this to the absolute fullest, finding new and exciting ways to invite all Americans to journey through our exceptional nation’s exceptional past,” said Chief of Protocol of the United States Monica Crowley at a send-off event Monday in D.C. for the Freedom Plane.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the number of documents going on the Freedom Plane tour. There are nine.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.
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