A full text biography of Elgen Long's life. Born in McMinville, Oregon in 1927, Elgen began work simply selling newspapers on the local street corner.
Read about ongoing and past research conducted on Amelia Earhart and her disappearance. Researching began after his round-the-world flight in the 1970s.
Elgen's work includes a rich aviation career and ongoing research into Oregon history and the US education system. Read about his life works.
During the 1970s when conspiracy theories circled the Amelia Earhart mystery, Elgen Long and his wife, Marie, set out to put together credible research behind her disappearance. Elgen's aviation expertise (and his own experience from flying around the world, setting fifteen world records and firsts) told him that the most probable explanation for her disappearance lay in the navigation and communications surrounding Earhart’s last flight. After over thirty-five years of research, Elgen and Marie plotted the most likely area where Earhart would have ditched her Lockheed Electra. Much of research has been put into the book Amelia Earhart: The Mystery Solved.
Elgen has led a life determined to accomplish his personal goals, and wants to demonstrate to others they can achieve theirs, too. When Elgen was the first to solo across the continent of Antarctica, he pushed through temperatures of thirty-three below zero. His heater failed on the way to the South Pole, and it would be eight cold hours later before he would land safely on the ice runway at McMurdo Sound.