Alaska's First Bush Pilots, 1923-30 - Jim Rearden

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an adroit stunt pilot.

      That fall at Climax, Minnesota, while taking off from a muddy field, he wrapped one of the wings of the Jenny around a telephone pole. The plane dropped to the ground, one wing and the landing gear destroyed. Eielson was unhurt. The wrecked plane was hauled back to Hatton and the Hatton Aero Club was dissolved.

      Ben rebuilt the damaged wing and landing gear, installed a new engine, and brought the Jenny back to flying status. He flew it to Grand Forks and re-entered the University of North Dakota. On weekends he barnstormed with the Jenny.

      He graduated from the University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in June, 1921. That summer, two other WWI-trained pilots, Charles W. “Speed” Holman (who became a famed racing pilot later in life; Holman Field, St. Paul, Minnesota, honors his name), and Frank Talcott, joined Ben in barnstorming and aerial stunting exhibitions with the Jenny.

      AT FAIRBANKS

      Ben sold the Jenny at the end of summer, 1921, and signed up for postgraduate law courses at Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C. To help pay his way, he worked on the Capitol Police Force as a guard in the U.S. House Office Building. There he met Dan Sutherland, Alaska’s voteless delegate to Congress. He spent many hours visiting with Sutherland, mostly talking aviation with him. From Sutherland, Ben learned of a job opening for a high school teacher at Fairbanks in the fall of 1922. He applied for the job and was hired.

      The Fairbanks he arrived at had a population of 1,155, and was the center of a gold mining district. When cold weather arrived in late October and November, miners from surrounding areas moved to town for the winter. The town was also the center for gathering raw furs, a secondary but important industry across Alaska. Homes were mostly log cabins, although frame buildings dominated the business district. There were seven hotels, eight restaurants, four dance halls. Electricity provided lighting for the town. Water was delivered by horse-drawn wagon in summer, and sled in winter.

      Outhouses were common. Streets were unpaved, and there were more dog teams than cars. Winter sled trails to villages, mines, and trapping areas spiderwebbed from Fairbanks. In summer, a few cars traveled between coastal Valdez and Fairbanks on the Richardson Highway, an upgraded wagon trail that penetrated the great Alaska Range. There were 206 autos in private ownership in Fairbanks. The speed limit on the “highways” was twenty-five miles an hour. In winter, horse-drawn double-ender sleds traveled between Fairbanks and coastal Valdez. Roadhouses, roughly thirty miles apart, provided food and overnight accommodations. However, the Alaska Railroad, the northernmost railroad in North America, with 470 miles of rail from coastal Seward to Fairbanks, was completed in 1923, all but ending traffic to and from Valdez.

      Living costs at Fairbanks ran somewhat higher than those in the states. Alex Simson’s Department Store, opposite the Nordale Hotel on Second Street, advertised in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner blue chambray work shirts for seventy-five cents, heavy pure wool socks for twenty-five cents. A suit of Medlicott wool underwear cost six dollars fifty cents. The Cut Price Store (which advertised, “Highest prices paid for raw furs”), sold heavy wool pants for five dollars; fine dress pants were seven dollars fifty cents. Stag wool shirts were six dollars fifty cents. Fairbanks merchants didn’t accept coins smaller than twenty-five cents.

      Eielson’s Norwegian heritage proclaimed itself with his blue eyes and blond hair, already thinning at 25 when he arrived at Fairbanks. He stood a sturdy 5 feet 10 inches, and weighed 165 pounds. He was one of three teachers in the Fairbanks two-story, red, frame-built school, which, that fall had forty-eight students. Eielson was friendly, easy-to-meet, pleasant. He quickly made many friends in this tiny frontier town.

      His students quickly learned if they could get him talking about airplanes, or aviation in general, he might take up a full hour period on the subject. Aviation, and the future of it, dominated his thoughts. Though he was new to the Territory, he already dreamed of a future when airplanes would provide passenger and freight service throughout Alaska. He even envisioned mail and passenger flights across Alaska to Siberia, and beyond to Europe.

      His ideas were far ahead of the abilities of aircraft of the time; there were no airports as such needed for their support.

      FAIRBANKS’ FIRST AIRPLANES

      The first airplane ever at Fairbanks was a Gage-Martin biplane powered by an eight-cylinder Hall-Scott motor. It was owned and flown by its designer, James Martin, who was accompanied to Fairbanks by his aviatrix wife, Lily.

      To transport their airplane to Fairbanks its wings were removed and crated. The Martins and their airplane traveled by ship from Seattle to Skagway. From there they rode the White Pass Railroad to Whitehorse. Next, the Martins and their plane went by river steamer down the Yukon to Tanana, and up the Tanana River to Chena, and up Chena Slough to Fairbanks.

      The little airplane flew at about 45 mph, and between July 3 and 5, 1913, Martin made five flights with it from Fairbanks’ edge-oftown Exposition Park. The longest flight lasted fourteen minutes.

      Next, on August 19, 1920, the four De Havilland DH-4B biplanes of the U.S. Army’s Black Wolf Squadron arrived in Fairbanks on their highly-publicized month-long New York to Nome flight. They were greeted by an enthusiastic crowd.

      The squadron left for Nome the next day. After reaching Nome, they turned back, and again stopped briefly in Fairbanks on their return flight to the states.

      A TRIAL AIRMAIL FLIGHT

      Eielson often visited with sourdoughs in the lobby of the Alaska Hotel, where he roomed. Some told outrageous stories, hoping the young cheechako (newcomer) would bite. Among Fairbanksans who became his friends was debonair W. F. “Wrongfont” Thompson, editor of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, with whom Ben frequently visited. They talked mostly about aviation.

      During winters, most mail in interior Alaska was hauled by dog team, and had been since the 1800s. It was slow and expensive. Eielson thought Alaska’s mail could easily be flown, although no one had flown a plane through the deep cold of an interior winter. Somehow he managed to receive permission from the Post Office Department to make a trial airmail flight from Fairbanks to fifty-eight-mile-distant (by rail) Nenana.

      With a borrowed airplane, on February 21, 1923, with the temperature at +5 F., with no wind, he flew 500 pounds of mail and express packages from Fairbanks to Nenana. The flight was recorded in the Congressional Record. References don’t reveal which airplane he flew, or from whom he borrowed it.

      THE FARTHEST-NORTH AIRPLANE COMPANY

      Ben, with News-Miner editor W. F. Thompson and banker Dick Wood, formed the Farthest-North Airplane Company. They put together enough money to buy a military surplus OX-5-powered Jenny. Wood contributed most of the $750 price of the plane.

      Eielson planned to fly the plane commercially—a first in interior Alaska.

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       Eielson in the front cockpit of the Ox-5 Jenny NC47358, at Fairbanks. This airplane was purchased for $750 by the Farthest-North Airplane Company, which was formed by Eielson, W. F. Thompson, and Dick Wood. Passenger in the rear cockpit is Mrs. Ladessa Nordale, wearing Ben’s flying helmet and goggles. Circa 1923.

      THE JENNY FLIES

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