This is Floyd Wynne with THE VIEW FROM HERE
December
23, 2003
Time for
another great moment in Klamath History. Last
week the nation commemorated the first airplane flight of the Wright
Brothers...a hundred years ago.
Eight years
later...Klamath Falls would celebrate the first airplane flight locally.
An active
chamber of commerce sponsored the event. The
year before, 1910, they had sponsored the first balloon flight in the Basin as
part of the July 4th celebration.
They decided to
top that event for their July 4th parade in 1911.
A committee
contacted W.C. Purvine in San Francisco and it was arranged that a flier by the
name of Bud Mars could be hired for $1,000.
The price was high but they cancelled the annual barbecue to finance it.
The Evening
Herald reported the event, saying “The much heralded, much cancelled and much
desired aviation exhibition which the July 4th committee worked so hard to
secure took place Wednesday. Bud
Mars, in a Curtis Bi-plane gave two successful
flights near the Southern Pacific Depot, starting in a field just across
the track.
“The flight
was scheduled to take place at 10 O’clock was nearly an hour and a half later
before the machine finally arose. This
delay was caused on account of engine troubles which had to be attended to
before the aviator would risk his life in the air.
On one occasion the machine made quite a run across the field but the
engine died before the bi-plane left the ground.
“When the
machine finally started, skimmed across the ground and rose in the air like a
bird, a great cheer arose as the crowd watched the ease and grace with which the
bi-plane soared higher in the air and went further away until it was a mere
outline in the sky. All felt well
repaid for a long wait in the scorching sun.
The sighting of the air ship was another feature that was warmly
applauded, and so nearly like a bird did the creation of canvas and machinery
skim along over the ground that several dogs started across the field to make a
close investigation of this new type of fowl.
“Following
his flight, Mars made another trip in the air, and this was pronounced to have
been even more spectacular than the first .
“In the
afternoon Mars was to have given another exhibition, but owing to a mishap to
the engine was unable to do so.”
Thus read the
historic event....only eight years after the Wright brothers first ever airplane
flight.”
Oliver
Applegate Jr. wrote of the event later. He
said, “Well, I can tell you the full story because I was there and
participated in helping to put the thing together.......Mars had the thing
shipped in crates....had it all torn down and shipped in crates to Klamath
Falls. Then we got a field, out someplace around where the depot was, I forget
whether it was on the other side of the tracks or on the inside of the tracks.
It was quite a considerable field there, and when I say inside of the
tracks, I mean the tracks in the main part of town.
....we kids of the town helped him uncrate it and helped him screw it
together and tightened up the wing nuts and so forth. Then....he said, ‘well, if any of you boys would like to
take a flight, well, you’re welcome to do so.
Nobody went up with him, so, he went up about one thousand feet and came
down and cracked up, not badly, he wasn’t hurt, but he broke the under
carriage to the wheels and I rushed out and grabbed a piece of wheel and had it
in my room when I was in high school.”
Klamath Falls
at the time was enjoying some tremendous progress.
Both the steamer Winema and the Klamath had been launched in the lakes in
1906....the A Canal which had been building for more than a year found the first
water flowing in it in 1907...and the first train arriving in 1909.
The population had tripled in the past five years.
This if Floyd Wynne and that's "The View from Here"
Click Here for a picture of the 1911 Airplane