The history of aviation in southeast Idaho started out with somewhat of a whimper. Airplane flights were advertised at the Eastern Idaho State Fair in 1914, $75 a ride. Confirmation of the proposed airplane service was received on September 11th to the relief of the fair board, as the prior year's scheduled aviation event never took place. The airplane was to take off and land in front of the grandstand three times a day--it never did so.
Getting "stood up" by promising aviators was nothing new for Blackfoot, a deal having been struck in 1911 with the Kit Carson Buffalo Ranch Wild West Show for airplane rides, a two mile parade, cowgirls, cowboys, Indians, trained wild animals, Cossacks, Vaqueros, lady riders, and clowns--a combination circus and rodeo. Neither the planes nor the two mile parade materialized.
The show scheduled a number of dates throughout Idaho--Montpelier, Mountain Home and Boise among the stops. Montpelier's show received a scathing review--no airplane there, either, and the wild animals consisting of one monkey and two elephants that walked in the parade but did not perform. The Wounded Knee performance was the "worst ever" and not a single show was worth the twenty-five cent admission. The illegal "shell game" was played on the site, bilking Montpelierites of watches and as much as twenty dollars, and the equally illegal roulette wheel made an appearance at the sideshow, too.
A train inventory of the show listed 12 train cars, 1 advance car, 3 stock cars, 5 flat cars, and three coaches, so while the show itself may not have been remarkable, its entourage was substantial. The Carson show had an apparently deserved reputation as being full of grifters, and was run out of a Kentucky town by upset villagers in 1914. It went bankrupt shortly after.
The 1913 fair advertised flights similarly and with like results--the airplane never showed. The fair board tried again in 1914 when a contract was made with the Moisant Aeroplane Company in New York, which was scheduled for like events in Mackay and Rexburg fairs that came prior to Blackfoot's. The company stiffed Rexburg and decided Mackay was of too high an elevation to fly, so Blackfoot, seeking assurance but getting none, contracted with a Kansas City firm, The Young Aeroplane Company to take its place. New York's plane arrived days before the fair and the Kansas City plane came a day late, and in the confusion the first plane was released from its contract and made for Red Lodge, Montana for a booking.
Rain and wind prevented the first flights, but a contract dispute was more of a hindrance later on. The board wouldn't pay aforehand, assuming the pilot might abscond with the money, but the pilot wouldn't fly without being paid--until the fair issued lawsuit papers. He flew and, according to many observers, intentionally wrecked his plane. Their suspicion stemmed from the pilot failing to strap himself in before he raked one fence and then jumped from the plane before it slammed into another in front of the grandstand. The board refused to pay him for the aborted flight, which would have brought $200 were it successful, and tried (but failed) to fetch the New York plane, now in Red Lodge, to take his place.
1915 brought another try, the fair contracting Herbert Munter to conduct two flights a day for $500. He would perform the "Dip of Death" and other dangerous acts. Despite turbulent air, Munter performed his stunts, spending twenty minutes in the air to the delight of fairgoers--who were also treated to the "Indian Watermelon Race", an event of native horsemen racing to watermelons 200 yards down the track, dismounting to pick them up and then remounting for the return. Only one rider dropped his melon.
The aviation era, troubled early, gained traction and know-how with its military use in WWI. At home, moonshine was being flown into dry parts of Utah and Idaho as train shipments of contraband became more and more difficult under intense scrutiny. In 1919, eight government airplanes provided a show in Pocatello, "cutting capers, looping the loop and performing all manners of stunts." A forest service fire patrol from the air was established that year, and in 1920 a Lost River realtor regularly provided air service for prospective clients from out of state. An Idaho Falls to Pocatello air mail route was okayed, the first shipment in Idaho happening on April 16 with H.H. Barker flying. Barker's plane gave an exhibition of stunts during the 1920 Blackfoot fair, including a race with a motorcycle.
The Blackfoot City Council discussed possible sites for a landing strip the next spring, with sites at Diggie Road and east of the Blackfoot Bridge, along the river, among the possibilities. Trials of airplanes for crop dusting took place in New England in 1923, but planes were still unusual enough to make sitings worthy of newspaper mention and they still scared cattle, a Stampede and Stockmen's reunion in Henry scheduling an airplane landing without thought of the animals' reactions, the cattle and horses all stampeding at full speed away from the commotion.
Blackfoot applied to be a landing site for airmail service in 1924. A few months later, Texaco Oil company made Blackfoot its thirteenth stop on an airplane tour through towns harboring its stations. The plane gave rides to citizens--"in the long climb upward it gives one the feeling of ambition, a desire to do, to see", a report said, noting the Snake looked an inch wide and the Blackfoot River just a ribbon of silver. The ride cost passengers $5 for a fifteen minute jaunt.
The thirties saw local citizens purchasing airplanes--Shelley's Benjamin Stringham, who bought a Stinson Biplane in 1930 and crashed it along with four others on its first flight near Jackson; Jim Judge in Springfield, who bought a plane in 1933 in California and flew it to Taylor Meadow, near home, among others. At an airshow in Pocatello, an 18-year old Preston girl parachuted to her death before a crowd of 5000, reportedly never even trying to open her chute. And the forties ushered in crop dusters who braved power lines (fewer then) and other obstacles with less sophisticated equipment than exists now with a resultant number of fatalities. Pilots dropped supplies, mail, and medical assistance to those in Bingham County trapped in the terrible winter of 1948.
In just a few decades, the world had gained another dimension, flight, with the unimaginable becoming the unusual and then transforming into the common.
Ralph Thurston is the author of The Shanghi Plain: Bingham County's Early History, available at Kesler's Market in Blackfoot and online at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CCCS7XLR?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860
(For bulk or classroom pricing, contact the author)
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