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The word “pioneer” conjures up for me covered wagons moving westward across the plains. The word means much more, however, for anyone who does something first is a pioneer. Let me mention the pioneering efforts of airmail service into the U.S. Westerners did it, wouldn’t you know!
The very first airmail letter to arrive in my own area, Fort Worth, was a one-time event and happened October 17, 1911. An Easterner, Calbraith Perry Rodgers, set out to be the first person to fly an airplane across the U.S. from coast to coast. He stopped in many places, including Fort Worth. He presented a letter to J.M. North, Jr., the editor of Amon Carter’s Fort Worth Star-Telegram, from someone in McAlester, Oklahoma. That was the first airmail delivery to Fort Worth.
Rodgers was the great-great grandson of Matthew Calbraith Perry who opened Japan to trade with the U.S. in 1853-54. Rodgers was the great-great nephew of Oliver Hazard Perry who fought the British on Lake Erie in the War of 1812 and made the famous statement “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” Rodgers did make it across the U.S. It took nearly three months, and he landed for overnight stops 82 times. The regular airmail service for the country took a bit longer to materialize. The first airmail pilot flew on September 25, 1911, but the service didn’t last. Then on May 15, 1918 President and Mrs. Woodrow Wilson saw the beginning of mail service between Washington, D.C. and New York City. Congress approved it, appropriating $100,000 and using military airplanes. Lt. George Boyle flew the first airplane carrying mail out of Washington, D.C. After all the hoopla, at first the plane wouldn’t start because he forgot to put gasoline in the gas tank! Then, he later crashed and took the mail to its destination by train. This was not an auspicious beginning for the U.S. mail.
By 1920 a regular route from New York to California, the first transcontinental flight to deliver airmail, occurred. Pilots flew only in the daytime and took 70 hours to complete the trip. The mail arrived only one day earlier than the fastest train. When President Warren G. Harding took office, he threatened to end the airmail service, calling it a waste of money. The mail service responded that they would fly both day and night. As a consequence, people lit bonfires on the ground to guide the way at night. During the winter, snowstorms put a stop to the bonfires, however. The day and night flying could get the mail through in 33 hours. Beacons finally stretched across the country to light the way at night. Those assigned to keep the beacons lit maintained lonely outposts across the Western part of the country. (This reminds me of the posts to support the pony express, except the airmail ones didn’t have the Indian threat). By the mid-1920s airmail became a regular, dependable service. The best customers were banks that needed to send checks. Congress passed the Kelly Bill in 1925 to privatize the mail. Airmail contracts were awarded to various airlines based on bidding. Fort Worth’s Meacham Field was on a north/south route from San Antonio, through Dallas/Fort Worth to Oklahoma City, Wichita, Kansas City and on up to Chicago. Both Dallas and Fort Worth participated as the airplanes stopped at Dallas on the flight north and Fort Worth on the flight south. At one point William Boeing won the bid to supply part of the Western leg of the air service. Boeing, son of an immigrant, dropped out of Harvard. In 1916 he acquired airmail contracts. He also sought contracts to build military airplanes for the government. In 1926 when he won another post office contract, he decided to put a new engine on the old World War I Boeing 40A. He added a little passenger section, big enough for two people, on the plane and took over the San Francisco to Chicago route. The pilot flew in an open cockpit and carried a gun to protect the mail. To inaugurate the service Boeing’s wife Bertha broke a bottle of champagne over the airplane. The Chicago to San Francisco leg took 23 hours. Boeing eventually sold the company, but when the Boeing 707 came out, the company invited him and asked Bertha to break a bottle over the new airplane. When Boeing died in 1956, he held no Boeing stock. The Chicago to San Francisco flight in a Boeing today takes only four hours. Daniel Rust presented a paper on Boeing and his pioneering airmail service at a convention I attended recently. His summing up comment was: “Air flight changed the West.” I agree. Retired history professor J’Nell Pate of Azle has authored several books, many of which are on sale in the lobby of the Azle News. |
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