Cheston Eshelman: The Man Who Tried to Fly to Mars
The image of the eccentric inventor has long been a stereotype in film and literature, and, from Nikola Tesla to Buckminster Fuller, history records no shortage of such men and women. These, to quote O'Shaughnessy, are the dreamers of dreams; while some visionaries pride themselves for their ability to think outside the box, only a select handful do away with the box entirely and chart their own course. One such visionary, Cheston Lee Eshelman, was born and raised right here in Pennsylvania. And the course he charted for himself included a trip to Mars in a 1930s-era lightweight monoplane. From Apples to Aviation Born in 1917 in the rural Adams County village of McKnightstown, Cheston was the son of Samuel Eshelman and Bertha Musselman Eshelman. Samuel Eshelman was a successful fruit grower, owning one of the largest apple orchards in Adams County, while Cheston's mother was the sister of Christian H. Musselman, founder of the fruit processing company which made the Musselman...
