On May 24, 1931, an air mail pilot named Jimmy Cleveland crashed his plane on top of Nittany Mountain. Seventy-Eight years later to the day, G-Force and I hiked the James Cleveland Trail to view his memorial.
From an Air & Space Magazine article entitled Slim Lewis Slept Here and dated 1991-10-01:
“Bellefonte’s last airmail fatality occurred in May 1931, when pilot Jimmy Cleveland died on a mountainside south of town. Forty years later the dead pilot’s brother, accompanied by Jim Kerschner and Hugh Manchester, among others, found remnants of the airplane and had a granite marker placed at the crash site.”
