Inside Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum | Pinpoint Colorado

Step inside one of Colorado’s most fascinating destinations as Rachel Mains visits Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum in Denver. In this episode of Pinpoint Colorado, Rachel talks with President and CEO David Dickerson about the museum’s rich aviation history, interactive exhibits, educational programs, veteran-led tours, and how this special place is inspiring the next generation of pilots, engineers, and aerospace leaders. 

From historic aircraft and flight simulators to moon rocks, family activities, and unique events at both museum locations, this episode highlights why Wings Over the Rockies is more than a museum. It’s a hands-on experience that connects Colorado’s past, present, and future in aviation and space exploration. 

Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pinpointcolorado 

Watch Past Episodes: https://rachelmainsmedia.com/pinpoint-colorado

Show Sponsor: https://www.670kltt.com/angel

Listen to KLTT Radio: https://www.670kltt.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Buying or selling a home can feel overwhelming. Big decisions, emotional moments, and a thousand little details. That's why you need more than just a real estate agent. You need someone who truly cares. Megan Marion is your real estate angel. She's not just there to unlock doors or push paperwork. She walks with you through the entire process with compassion, wisdom, and a servant's heart. Whether you're buying your first home or selling a place full of memories, Megan brings peace to the process. From big decisions to small details, she goes the extra mile because to her, this is never just a transaction. It's personal. Megan Marion, your real estate angel. Call 720-229-6674 or learn more at 670klt.com/slash angel. That's 720-229-6674.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

Welcome to Pinpoint, Colorado. I'm your host, Rachel Mees. Today I'm at Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum in Denver, Colorado's official Aaron Space Museum. This remarkable space features over 100,000 square feet of exhibits. This is a place for families, history lovers, and future pilots can step into the story of flight aviation. Coming up, I'll be joined by President and CEO David Dickerson. Well, thank you, David, for being here. I know you're a busy guy and just taking the time to be on pinpoint really means a lot.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

I had not heard about this, and this is a treasure for sure, a gem in Colorado.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Truly is.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

How long has this been open?

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Gosh, Wings started in 1994. Um, so actually 32 years now. But where we're sitting is in the middle of our number one hangar at Lowry, the former Lowry Air Force Base, which was actually built in 1937, and then it was decommissioned in the early 90s, and uh the Lowry Redevelopment Authority took over. And we were fortunate enough to be able to create Colorado's first official air and space museum right here.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

Wow, so obviously this is a great family um event for people. Kids love this, I'm sure. And you give tours as well?

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Oh, absolutely. We have tours every day. We're open seven days a week, uh, typically from except on Sundays from 10 to uh 5, Sundays from 12 to 5. And uh we have docents here that uh many of which are veterans, almost 90% of our docents are veterans and who flew many of the aircraft that you see here. So they're fascinating to talk to and uh give great tours, and and uh working with children is really the most rewarding part of this.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

Yeah, kids love well, trains, airplanes, all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

Um and anything to do with space as well. Um what's your favorite piece on the property? Oh boy, that's that's probably hard.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

It is a very hard question. Um, you know, we we have historic aircraft like uh the B-18 Bolo, which is fantastic, and the F-104, uh Vietnam Air aircraft. I'd have to my my son's an F-18 pilot in the Navy, so I'd have to say our F-14 Tomcat's pretty darn special.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

Well, you must be proud.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Very proud of him. Yeah. And he started here as a wings kid. I started bringing him here when he was six years old. So uh it's kind of neat to see it come full circle.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Because you are kind of, you know, training up the next generation. A kid can come here and be like, this is what I want to do.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Absolutely. And it's and the thing I'm most proud of is when I was a kid, uh, if you you were a pilot and that was the your involvement in aviation, now there's any number of careers in aviation, from pilot to maintainer to designer to engineer. Um, we even have a young lady, um, a daughter of one of our staff members who is designing textiles for spacecraft. Um fascinating. And so uh it's there's so many career paths, and that's helping people launch that career, launch, realize that there's those paths, and then launching them is something that's very important to us. Right. We are so much more than a museum. Yeah. Museums kind of conjure up images of dusty old artifacts sitting around and and uh and we certainly have artifacts. They're not dusty. Um and we have our collection, uh, our our cultural collection here, but we also have a strong education program and we have a strong community outreach program as well, both of which are extremely important. We have an inflatable planetarium that we take to schools uh all along the front range uh and teach astronomy uh to students. Uh we teach rocketry, robotics, um, our our Wings Aerospace Education program. We have 95 students here, middle and high schoolers, um, that come and they learn robotics, they learn drones. Uh, they can actually get their FAA 107, which is your drone license, uh, here uh as part of their normal school. Yeah. Um it's really, it's it's really, again, so much more than just a museum.

SPEAKER_02 4:47

Yeah, you guys offer a lot.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

We're very fortunate in that regard. And really it's due to we have a tremendous staff, um educators, uh historians, um, and uh fundraising people, of course. So every museum needs those. But uh the staff here is really fantastic and and terribly involved in everything that we do.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

Yeah, you guys are doing a great job.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 5:09

When someone comes for a tour here, how long typically does the tour take?

SPEAKER_01 5:13

You know, I always I always recommend that you allow at least two hours. But we have people that come and stay all day. Uh we have restaurants actually adjacent to the facility here, some really good ones, and uh have lunch. You can actually sit up on our patio uh upstairs and over looking uh looking out over our B-52 and then come back in and do some more. You can easily spend a whole day here, but two hours minimum is what I always recommend.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

I see so many cool um pieces. Are we allowed to climb up on any of them and touch and feel?

SPEAKER_01 5:42

We have open cockpit days once a month uh on a Saturday, and uh we have pilots who flew the aircraft beside them, and then we also and we let people up to the cockpits to look inside.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:55

With the educational programs, are you tied to schools or how does that work?

SPEAKER_01 6:00

You know, uh about half of our students are homeschool students. I'm sorry, that was R2 D2 you heard in the background.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

Oh, I'm gonna have to go check that out.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

We have an X-Wing fighter and R2 D2s in the back, and he talks every now and then. So um the uh high school and middle schoolers, about half are homeschooled and half come from public schools, and they get permission from their staff to come here for specific classes related to aerospace.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

Wow. What is the number one thing that you hope, besides, you know, maybe a kid who's gonna go and you know be in the industry? Yeah, what is some other things that you hope people leave with when they when they leave here?

SPEAKER_01 6:34

You know, a sense of heritage, a sense of um a sense of Colorado's place in aviation history. You know, more astronauts come from Colorado than any other state.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

You know, I did not know that.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

It's pretty fascinating. Um, we have more than 2,000 aerospace companies in Colorado. Um, our next moon mission, Artemis II, uh, which will launch in April, uh, the capsule and the boosters are built here by Lockheed Martin. Um, the rover is going to be being built here. That'll be a part of Artemis IV. Um, there's a lot going on here. Um, boom, supersonic is building the first supersonic airliner out at Centennial Airport. Um, there's a tremendous amount of aerospace activity in this state. And and and certainly you learn about that here, but it's also remember important to remember where you came from. Right. So seeing some of our Vietnam era aircraft, for example, or our World War II aircraft, um, it gives you a sense of place and those that came before you. And I think that's really important in aerospace.

SPEAKER_02 7:34

Yeah. And just in general, to know our history as a state, but as a nation, and then the history of um aviation itself is is important. That's fascinating. In some ways, you know, kids are missing that. We're on our devices, we're watching television, we're on the internet a lot, but to actually have an experienced family or with friends to come here and be able to see it and touch it is very, very important.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

Extremely important. We're really big on getting off your screens and touching and feeling, and and again, listening to some of the stories here. We have one of our veterans flew 253 combat missions in Vietnam in one of the aircraft we have on display here in our Vietnam era section. And just being able to hear him and relate to that is totally different than reading about it.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

Um, and so that's one of the experiential components is very important here at Wings.

SPEAKER_02 8:22

Right. And be able to shake the hand of a hero who serves. Absolutely. Yeah, that's that's huge.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

Yeah. They're they're fascinating people. And uh we just I never get tired of the stories. And we never seem to hear the same story twice, which is great.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

Do you have a particular story that's not too long that you can share?

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Well, if you know me for long, my stories uh my stories are a bit long. Um I can I can tell you about my uh uh my son. I mentioned he's uh my oldest. Um he started over here. Uh we have a a uh little device called Trap the Cat, where you actually get to practice landing an aircraft on an aircraft carrier. Wow. He started doing that when six or seven years old. Now he's landing airplanes on aircraft carriers for real. Yeah. And uh whenever I see a young person over there playing with Trap the Cat, um, I have videos of my son's name is Brooks. I have videos of Brooks landing on board the Lincoln. And uh I'll always say, well, this is what it's like in real life.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

And uh you can just see the spark, the light bulb go off. Right.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

It's it's I can do this too.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 9:25

Yeah, that's exciting. Um when you tour the facility, besides the touch and feel, and you get a you know, um, learn. Is there anything else in particular that's a little bit new unique besides just seeing the the planes themselves? Sure. Because I see over here, and I don't know if we can we have it on camera, but there's like a little interactive thing back there.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

The um well, we have the Wright Brothers exhibit. We have simulators here. You can actually fly the right flyer. Um it's a it's a simulator, and and just like Wilbur and Orville, you lay down on it and you get 20 minutes of fuel, 20 seconds of fuel, which is pretty much what they had. Yeah. They kill Devil Hill, and you can actually fly that sim and see what it was like to fly the right flyer back in 1912.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

For people who want to come and tour, but they also want to support you guys. How can we support what you're doing here?

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Gosh, become a member is a wonderful way. You can go to our website, wingsmuseum.org, and donate directly to our website. We have a number of events every year that you can participate in. We just finished Astronomy Night. It's uh our centennial location. Um we had 13 different astronomy clubs that night to see the planet parade. Um, so there's always something going on almost every weekend. And so just by going to our website, you can participate there. And again, we love members. Members have special benefits here and and uh get uh VIP access to certain events and things. We have our annual Gala every year, which is another uh big event for us. Uh, we'll have this year uh we're honoring the Air Force Thunderbirds, and I expect we'll have around 700 people here that night.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Sounds fun.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

Is it held here or yes, right here at Lowry.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Uh last year, um, I don't know if you can see the our Harrier in the background. That's our first Marine Corps aircraft. We dedicated that last year. The Marines have a birthday every year. They only branch of service that have they celebrate their birthday every year on November the 9th. This year was the 250th birthday of the Marine Corps, and so we celebrated it here. We had about 650 Marines that night, and we dedicated our Harrier, which had just arrived, and we had uh roughly 21 Harrier pilots with us that evening. So it was very special. Yeah, but open to the public.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is something that it's just you're supporting the heritage and you're supporting, you know, if you're a patriot, you're supporting the heroes. And so a lot of people. And also look into the future.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

You know, you've seen you saw some of our spacecraft when you came in. Um a few weeks ago, we had Artemis II family day here. We had some 1,100 people on Monday. All the many equipment manufacturers that are building parts of the spacecraft were here to talk to people, talk to taxpayers, talk, tell them about their programs. Um, and it was a fascinating chance to get up close and personal. Um, nature and science brought a comet uh that people could touch. We have a moon rock here uh that you can see that our astronauts from Apollo 15 brought back for us. Wow. So lots to see and do.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

Yeah, I want to go see the moon moon rock for sure after this interview. Um there's two locations. So is there a difference between the two? This is you know a special location, but just kind of describe. So I could foresee, you know, a family day here and then the next weekend or the next month, you know, planning to go to the other location.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

We call this our historical repository because the aircraft are here or historic. They don't get to fly. At one time this was an Air Force base and they did fly, but now they're they're static and you can get up close and touch them. At Centennial, you can also get up close and touch, but you're touching real aircraft that just flew in that day. Right. Uh we have aircraft in our hangar there. It's an active hangar. Uh it's a rotating collection of aircraft that come and go. We have fly-in days. Second Saturday of every month is our breakfast fly-in. And we'll typically, oh, it's great fun. We have 14 or 15 aircraft that'll typically come in, helicopters too, and we serve breakfast. And uh it's a wonderful chance for visitors to interact with the airplanes, get up close and touch them. And the best thing about our Centennial location is that um most airports are uh highly secure areas and by design, and you can't really get in, so to speak. By buying a ticket to wings at our Centennial location, you can walk out our hangar doors onto the aircraft ramp and stand a hundred feet away from a landing aircraft and see what that's like.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

And then talk to the pilot when he taxis up and ask him about his airplane. It's a it's a great place. Yeah. So it's a really nice balance between historic and active.

SPEAKER_02 13:40

Right. Gotta check out both for sure.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Please, absolutely. And just go to the website and check that out and uh and we always have events, like I said, uh second Saturday fly-ins, open cockpit days, special nights or special events that are going on. The museum at night is a lot of fun, I have to tell you. So uh when you see those evening events, they're always fun to come to.

SPEAKER_02 14:00

Wow. Well, this is just a treasure, and I um wasn't too familiar with this place, but now I'm like, I gotta check out some of the stuff. And the breakfast is very intriguing to me, so I'll have to check that out for sure.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Make really good bacon.

SPEAKER_02 14:11

Well, I'm in. I'm in. Well, thank you so much for taking time out to share with us about this very special place, and um we'll hope to be back too and and book another interview in the future just to learn more. So I have so many more questions.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Thank you so much for taking the time.

SPEAKER_02 14:27

Thank you. My thanks to David Dickerson and team at Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum for sharing this incredible place with me today. You can learn more and plan your visit at wingsmuseum.org. And don't forget to stop on by pinplankcolorado.com to watch past episodes. Thanks for joining me and see you next time.