Landing Light

These lights were used to outline the President's Gettysburg farm helicopter landing pad, a mowed circle in the grass adjacent to the cropland in front of the Eisenhower home. When the Secret Service agents received word that the President was arriving at night in his helicopter, they placed these portable lights around the pad.

Eisenhower was the first president to use a helicopter and relied on it quite extensively during his second term for trips back and forth from the White House to the farm as well as to Camp David. Many world leaders were transported by helicopter to the farm including Winston Churchill and Nikita Khrushchev (ENHS 2472).