Historical Name: Carranza Memorial
Common Name: Pitch Pine
Latin Name: Pinus rigida
In 1928 Emilio Carranza, a Captain in the Mexican Air Corps and the most famous airman in the country, was chosen to replicate Lindbergh’s nonstop flight between Mexico City and Washington, DC. Carranza, piloting a Ryan monoplane similar to Lindbergh’s Spirit of Saint Louis was forced to land in North Carolina due to fog. He was still considered a hero when he reached Washington, and even had lunch with President Calvin Coolidge. Since he was a nephew of a former President of Mexico, as a good will gesture he flew with Lindbergh, their planes side by side, around the Eastern US for a month.
On July 12, 1928 he took off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island for a nonstop return flight to Mexico City. Its distance would have been second only to Lindbergh’s flight between NY City and Paris the year before. The weather that day was stormy, and he was advised to postpone his trip. Nevertheless Carranza took off with his plane heavily burdened with fuel. During a violent storm he crashed into New Jersey’s Pine Barrens and was killed instantly. Blueberry pickers found him the next day. He was buried in Mexico as a national hero and Mexican schoolchildren raised money to build a stone monument at the site of the accident. To this day on every July 12th a memorial service takes place at the Monument in Burlington County, with representatives of the Mexican government and US Armed Forces. The Mexican and American anthems are sung by those in attendance to honor the aviator nicknamed “The Lindbergh of Mexico.”
In his book The Pine Barrens, John McPhee recalls visiting the Monument with a Pine Barrens resident who heard the crash. The old-timer noted that the plane hit the large old Pitch Pine that still stands at the Monument site. A tree grown from a seed collected from the Carranza Memorial Pitch Pine can be found in UCNJ’s Historic Tree Grove. It was planted there in 2010.