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State was one-time flight capital(Daily Oklahoman, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Nov. 6--TULSA -- A bamboo and wood framework covered with linen swirls launched into the sky before falling into the river, never to be seen again. So much for what might have been the first airplane to take to the skies of Oklahoma. No one was there that night in 1906 on the banks of the Arkansas River, so no one will ever know for sure what happened, said Kim Jones, curator of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum. That near "flight" -- actually the effect of a storm that swept away the plane before its inventor could find out if his creation could fly -- is part of a rich aviation history in a state that once boasted the busiest airports in the world. That history has always fascinated Jones, who has been working on the museum's exhibit, "100 Years of Aviation -- From Statehood to Space." The exhibit, which opens Nov. 9 and runs until Nov. 30, 2007, focuses on aviation in one of the centers of flight in the early years of aviation -- Tulsa. However, another incubator of the fledgling science of flight was right down the road in Oklahoma City, said Bill Moore, who works in the research division of the Oklahoma Historical Society. There was so much pioneering aviation going on in Tulsa, Oklahoma City and just across the Kansas border in Wichita that those three cities were known as the "Aviation Triangle," Moore said. As Jones put it, "You had this kind of a pocket of early aviation." Even Muskogee, with its Hatbox Field that was a stop for Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart as well as Army fliers who made an around-the-world flight in 1924, was "quite active," Moore said. "But Tulsa and Oklahoma City really took it a step further," he said. Those cities were centers of innovation and manufacturing in aviation's early years, even into World War II, when each city was the site of a Douglas aircraft manufacturing plant that stretched nearly a mile. The age of flight actually came to Oklahoma before statehood. The first documented flight -- according to "The Oklahoma Aviation Story," by Jones, Moore, Keith Tolman and Carl Gregory -- occurred at a Fourth of July celebration in Guthrie in 1893. Eddie Landon performed his "leap for life," parachuting from a balloon. The first such flight in Tulsa occurred four years later. To pull it off, $200 cash had to be placed in a fruit jar in the window of a local hardware store, Jones said. The public display of earnest money was needed because the balloonist didn't trust the town to come up with the money, and the town didn't trust the balloonist to perform if he got paid in advance. So at the 1897 Fourth of July celebration, a balloon was filled with hot smoke, causing it to rise about 1,000 feet. Seated on a trapeze beneath the balloon, the balloonist slid off the seat and, holding onto a wooden ring on the parachute lines, floated to earth. The first documented flight of an airplane in Oklahoma was almost performed by French aviator Louis Paulhan, but while unpacking his plane in Oklahoma City, he was served with an injunction filed by the Wright brothers for a patent dispute. A month later, on March 19, 1910, on a field south of the Capitol, hundreds of people paid for the privilege to watch Charles Willard fly less than a mile in a pusher biplane, according to "The Oklahoma Aviation Story." With pioneers like Wiley Post, Billy Parker and others, Oklahoma would notch many firsts in aviation. One of the strangest -- maybe the first skyjacking in history -- occurred in Sayre in 1911. According to "The Oklahoma Aviation Story," a pickpocket being chased by a town marshal leaped into the basket of aeronaut George Harvey as he began his ascent and ordered Harvey at gunpoint not to descend. After the balloon drifted 50 miles, the thief leaped out from a height of 10 feet and ran off. In the early years, Oklahoma apparently was the place to be for aviators. Maybe it was because of the pioneering spirit in a state settled by speculators, entrepreneurs and people seeking a new start. Certainly it had a lot to do with what those pioneers found here: oil. Whenever a new oil field was discovered, promoters rushed to secure contracts on mineral rights, Jones said. With roads being sparse and rough, the budding oil barons realized the best way to reach almost anywhere was by air. That helped make Tulsa's airport, according to one account, the busiest in the world around 1930, before established passenger service, Jones said. A close second -- for the same reasons -- probably was Oklahoma City's airport, he said. Even the first interstate shipment of goods by air was believed to have originated in Oklahoma, when a Tulsa company delivered pesticides to Kansas City, Mo., in 1919. Copyright (c) 2006, The Daily Oklahoman Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |