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Flashback Photos: Karl Wallenda's 1970 Tallulah Gorge skywalk
Karl Wallenda, founder of the Flying Wallendas, dazzled onlookers with his high-wire skywalk across Tallulah Gorge in north Georgia on July 18, 1970.
![From the 1970 AJC story on Wallenda's walk: "Tapes of the microphone monologue of Wallenda indicated he joked most of the way. Once he directed his remarks to his wife, Helen. 'Darling, are you there? I am coming.' Then, 'it's martini time. I'd better hurry.' Wallenda had said [the night before the walk] that he wanted a martini as soon as he completed the trek."](https://images.ajc.com/resizer/v2/7G7Y3NEBZKZ6X6O2U2FBD6J2TA.jpg?auth=ff333b1da8adb19cec214c6034adbe481f2c4493cde694333c99fa5ae73d117c&width=3840&height=4788&smart=true)
!["As Wallenda stepped off the catwalk, dust rose behind him," the 1970 AJC article states. "The car taking his wife to the destination tower was leaving. Helen [Wallenda] had avoided watching her husband perform after near tragedy in a Hartford, Conn., circus fire in 1966. She wanted to see as little of [the] walk as possible."](https://images.ajc.com/resizer/v2/6DEKVAOJGYGCFKSHXLQU3OAJIU.jpg?auth=325ba57c95ab1f5cdd6b79f2f9bd1a9ae2e838731a4b12bfff850c0d36d4d419&width=3840&height=4812&smart=true)
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On July 18, 1970, circus star Karl Wallenda of the Flying Wallendas "walked 1,000 feet toe-to-heel 700 feet above the jagged bottom of the gorge in 17.7 minutes -- 22.3 minutes less than had been predicted," according to Atlanta Journal-Constitution staff writers Ron Taylor and Chip Callaway, who penned the next-day story on the walk.
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