In the first few years after the Wright brothers’ powered flight in 1903, the nascent field of aviation piqued the interest of mostly inventors and daredevils. That began to change in 1910 as aviation caught the imagination of the public. The first air shows (Los Angeles, Boston, New York) drew large crowds. Each week, it seemed, pioneer aviators were in the news as they tested their machine and their mettle. Records for speed, distance, altitude were being set one day and broken the next.
Fort Worth got an early glimpse of such pioneer aviators at its first air show in January 1911.
Nine months later Fort Worth witnessed another milestone in the history of aviation.
In 1910 newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst had used his flagship newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner, to challenge fliers with his Hearst Transcontinental Prize: He would award $50,000 ($1.3 million today) to the first aviator to fly from coast to coast—in either direction. But the prize had two catches: The flight had to be completed in fewer than thirty days from start to finish, and the deadline to complete the flight was October 11, 1911.
Yes, the prize meant a lot of money. But also a lot of risk. Airplanes were simple, fragile machines.
And the state-of-the-art aviation was notable for what it lacked:
no paved runways
no control towers
no radar
no radio
no instruments
No sweat, said Cal Rodgers.
Calbraith Perry Rodgers, thirty-two, had been given flying lessons by Orville Wright himself and had recently set some records at the Chicago International Aviation Meet in August 1911. (Photo from Wikipedia.)
Now he had his eyes on the Hearst prize.
Rodgers persuaded J. Ogden Armour of the meatpacking company to sponsor his flight.
In return Rodgers named his airplane “Vin Fiz Flyer” after Vin Fiz, Armour’s grape soft drink. The airplane was a flying billboard: The words “Vin Fiz” were painted in large letters on the bottom of its lower wing.
The Vin Fiz Flyer was a Wright brothers-made “pusher”-type biplane. The engine developed thirty-five horsepower (comparable to an early Volkswagen Beetle engine). The airplane weighed only nine hundred pounds (half the weight of a Volkswagen Beetle). The wings were made of wood covered by linen. There was no cockpit. Rodgers sat between the wings beside the engine.
For his coast-to-coast flight Rodgers would be followed by a chase train, the Vin Fiz Express. The locomotive pulled a sleeper, a diner, and a shop-on-wheels full of spare parts. The train carried aviation mechanics (including Wright brothers mechanic Charles Taylor) and other support crew. Newspaper reporters also traveled on the train to cover the story. The train also carried two “emergency automobiles.”
Rodgers would be flying hundreds of feet in the air, but he would be riding the rails: He would find his way across country largely by following railroad tracks.
On September 17 as Rodgers prepared to begin his trip from the racetrack at Sheepshead Bay, New York he got a glimpse of what his trip would be like. Spectators surrounded his airplane, wrote their names on it, and tried to take pieces of it as souvenirs. (Photo from Wikipedia.)
The Hearst deadline was October 11.
Rodgers was allowing himself twenty-five days to fly across the country.
But the next day as he took off from Middletown, New York, his runway was so crowded with spectators that in order to avoid hitting someone, he crashed into a tree. He fell about thirty-five feet to the ground and was rendered unconscious. His airplane suffered a broken propeller and ripped canvas.
Man and machine quickly recovered and resumed their flight westward.
Mishaps continued: By the time Rodgers reached Chicago on October 8 he had crashed on takeoff three times, crashed on landing once, and damaged his skids three times.
Chicago was the only midcourse stop between coasts stipulated by Hearst. From Chicago Rodgers would fly south to Texas and then west, skirting the treacherous Rocky Mountains.
On October 9 an hour south of Chicago, over Dwight, Illinois, Cal Rodgers set a cross-country distance record of 1,262 miles.
However, two days later, when he reached Kansas City on October 11, the Hearst prize deadline passed. He had flown only about fifteen hundred miles—less than halfway to the other coast. He determined to continue the trip to prove that it could be done.
From Kansas City Rodgers would follow the Katy railroad track south to Fort Worth.
On October 12 the Star-Telegram began to anticipate his arrival in Fort Worth on October 15 or 16.
Note that Cal Rodgers shared the front page with a sketch of the proposed West 7th Street Bridge, which would open in 1914.
On October 15 Rodgers was in Vinita, Oklahoma. The Star-Telegram anticipated that he would reach Fort Worth by dusk.
In Fort Worth people gathered at a pasture in the Ryan Place addition in anticipation of Rodgers landing on October 16. Ryan Place in 1911 was well beyond the city limits. Developer John C. Ryan had announced development of the exclusive addition only in March. By October most of the addition was still pasture: flat and treeless. Just what a pilot needed.
But Rodgers was delayed in Oklahoma because of bad weather.
He crossed the Red River early on October 17.
During the Chicago-to-Texas leg of Rodgers’s trip, misfortune had continued to be his copilot: His plane suffered a cracked cylinder and damaged skids.
At 9:25 a.m. October 17 Rodgers took off from Denison bound for Fort Worth.
As Rodgers took off from Denison, his support crew notified Fort Worth that he was about ninety minutes away. To alert the populace, the Fort Worth fire department rang the big bell at the central fire station. Factory and locomotive whistles blew. Children were released from school, and businesses closed so that people could go to Ryan Place to witness the great event.
Meanwhile Rodgers landed for fuel at Pottsboro. There Rodgers made a tactical error: He took off before his chase train had left the station.
Following the Katy track, over Whitesboro Rodgers came to a fork in the road—the railroad, that is. He took the wrong fork and followed a spur west toward Wichita Falls.
Meanwhile his chase train was headed south. As soon as members of his team realized that the chase train was chasing thin air, they notified railroad personnel along the spur.
Crowds formed to catch Rodgers’s attention as he passed over.
People built fires to alert him.
Rodgers was seventy miles off course when he realized his mistake and landed. He reversed his course and flew east to Gainesville, where he followed the Santa Fe tracks south to Fort Worth.
Rodgers was more than five hours late arriving in Fort Worth. Nonetheless, between eight and ten thousand people had congregated in the pasture of Ryan Place. The pasture had become a parking lot of automobiles and buggies. People were arriving on foot, by streetcar.
Police officers, led by Police Chief J. William Renfro, formed a cordon through the pasture to give Rodgers a “runway.”
At the sound of a distant engine two men who traveled on the chase train began to wave a large white sheet to signal Rodgers.
Just after 4 p.m. he was sighted.
The Star-Telegram wrote: “‘There he comes,’ exclaimed everybody simultaneously, and instantly the whistles of the roundhouses and yard engines screeched forth their blasts of welcome until their sounds were drowned by the cheering multitude as the winged ‘creature’ hovered overhead and began to gently circle to earth.”
As the airplane neared, the crowd broke through the police cordon and swarmed the runway.
Rodgers had to circle the pasture three times before he found a space sufficiently uncrowded on which to land.
Rodgers emerged from his airplane wearing a cap on his head, goggles on his eyes, a cigar in his mouth.
“Howdy,” he said to the staring throng.
A man of few words.
He nonchalantly began to make adjustments to his machine.
But he was swarmed by the crowd and swept away until he was rescued by police officers.
Lauded by a reception committee for his aviation accomplishments, Rodgers had an “aw, shucks” attitude: “I don’t see where I have done anything much.”
In Ryan’s pasture people offered Rodgers large sums to money to let them accompany him on his flight to Dallas the next morning. He told them his airplane was too small for passengers.
He was taken to the Westbrook Hotel for the night.
By the time Cal Rodgers had landed in John C. Ryan’s pasture, Rodgers had flown 2,564 miles from Sheepshead Bay, New York: double the existing cross-country distance record. About five hundred of those miles were due to taking wrong turns.
Cal Rodgers on the left, John C. Ryan on the right.
The Texas Bottling & Candy Company—which sold Vin Fiz—commemorated Rodgers’s flight.
The next morning about five thousand people had gathered at Ryan’s pasture to watch Cal Rodgers take off for Dallas. Some people had been waiting since 8 a.m.
Again Police Chief Renfro and his officers struggled to keep the crowd back.
After Rodgers arrived by automobile, he looked over his engine, climbed into the airplane, and signaled to his ground crew to start the engine.
The crowd cheered as the airplane began to taxi down the pasture. As the Vin Fiz Flyer lifted off, the whistles blew at nearby factories and at the Frisco railyard.
Forty-one minutes later the Vin Fiz Flyer landed at the Dallas fair grounds.
Rodgers’s departure from Dallas to San Antonio was delayed after sightseers at the fair damaged his airplane.
In Dallas white strips of canvas were placed between the rails of the Katy track so that Rodgers would follow the correct track out of town.
Rodgers followed the Katy track south to San Antonio and then followed the Southern Pacific track west.
In each town he flew over or landed at, the scene at Fort Worth was repeated: Bells rang, whistles blew, schools were dismissed, businesses closed, and zealous crowds gathered.
Before Cal Rodgers got out of Texas, he had four more mishaps: His engine exploded, his skids again were damaged, and he crashed on takeoff twice.
On the last leg of his trip, between Texas and the West Coast, Rodgers crashed on landing once, an engine bearing failed, and his engine exploded again.
By the time the Vin Fiz Flyer reached Long Beach there was not much left of the original airplane.
Rodgers reached Long Beach on December 10.
At Long Beach he flew out over the Pacific, landed on the beach, and taxied the plane into the surf. About sixty thousand people watched him complete the first transcontinental flight.
This map shows the approximate route of Rodgers from Sheepshead Bay, New York to Long Beach, California.
What a long and winding road in the sky Rodgers had traveled. He had averaged sixty miles an hour, flying as high as four thousand feet, as low as two hundred feet.
He had landed in pastures, cotton fields, racetracks, and city parks, been delayed by weather, darkness, repairs, and wrong turns.
He made more than fifteen crash landings.
He suffered numerous injuries, including a broken leg, lacerations from shrapnel when a cylinder exploded, and assorted cuts and bruises.
He had flown 4,231 miles in 4,924 minutes of air time. During a trip of forty-nine days he had gotten into the air on twenty-four days, had been grounded on twenty-five days.
Rodgers’s trip made him a household word. The newspaper archive Newspapers.com shows that the name “Cal Rodgers” appeared in American, Canadian, and Australian newspapers 10,240 times in 1911.
Here is another measure of Rodgers’s accomplishment: While he was completing his coast-to-coast flight, the flight was attempted by two also-flews:
On September 13, 1911 James J. Ward left Governors Island in Manhattan but crashed on September 22 in Addison, New York on his way to San Francisco.
Robert G. Fowler chose to fly west to east. He left San Francisco on September 11, 1911 but did not reach the Atlantic Ocean (at Jacksonville, Florida) until February 8, 1912.
In April 1912 Calbraith Perry Rodgers was killed when his plane fell one hundred feet into the ocean at Long Beach. The accident occurred within sight of where he had finished his coast-to-coast flight. (Photos from Wikipedia.)
In Ryan Place Park.
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