By Michael Swanger
One hundred years ago, the U.S. Postal Service — then known as the U.S. Post Office Department — made headlines when it completed the first transcontinental airmail route linking New York with San Fransisco. And, wouldn’t you know it? Our beloved state played a role in the historic event.
Years before the record-setting flight of 1920 occurred, the Postal Service — whose roots can be traced back to 1775 — began experimenting with methods of airmail delivery in Iowa.
Unidentified men in 1925 load mail sacks from U.S. Mail truck at left onto de Havilland DH-4 mail plane at right in Omaha, Neb. Photo courtesy of Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
In 1911, according to Ann Holtgren Pellegreno’s “Iowa Takes To The Air: Volume One 1845-1918,” the Postal Service began delivering airmail with short, regional routes on the East Coast. Until then, mail was transported by land and water.
In Iowa, wrote Pellegreno, the first sanctioned airmail route was established at a Dubuque air meet held in July 1912. Pouches containing approximately 2,500 pieces of mail were dropped from the sky by aviators and delivered to the post office via mail wagon.
A second sanctioned airmail flight occurred two months later in Cedar Falls where pilot Lincoln Beachey was to perform a flight exhibition but a local postal employee convinced Beachey to transport mail. Beachey’s biplane was equipped with mail pouches attached to its lower wings. They contained about 3,000 pieces of mail, the largest amount of airmail at the time in Iowa.
“While these flights represented the beginning of commercial aviation in the state, no regularly-scheduled service would begin until after World War I,” wrote Pellegreno.
In December 1919, according to Iowa City’s government website, the Postal Service in Washington, D.C., was mapping out its first airmail route and telegraphed Iowa City Postmaster Max Mayer to request information about the Iowa City Municipal Airport, which opened in 1918. (It is the oldest civil airport west of the Mississippi River that remains in its original location.)
Mayer, according to the airport’s website, wired back:
“AVIATION FIELD ONE AND ONE HALF MILES SOUTHWEST OF THE POST OFFICE WEST OF RIVER ON RED BALL HIGHWAY. SEVEN-TENTHS OF A MILE FROM STREET CAR. CITY PHONE IN FARM HOUSE. TRANSPORTATION AVAILABLE AT POST OFFICE. PROPERTY OF W.J. BENJAMIN. FIELD 440 YARDS SQUARE. FOUR WAY LANDING, NO TREES OR BRUSH. NO BUILDING FOR AIRPLANE. TEMPORARY MARKINGS ONLY. WIRE MARKINGS DESIRED. AVIATORS REPORT FIELD FIRST CLASS.”
On Jan. 8, 1920, the Iowa City Municipal Airport was the only stop during a flight from Chicago to Omaha. On the return trip, pilot Walter J. Smith’s cargo was a 10-pound piglet, making it the first “mail” flown from Iowa City to the Windy City. The pig arrived safely, but Smith would die in a plane crash in May and the airport would be renamed “Smith Field” in his honor.
The Iowa City Municipal Airport would make national news and history when Postal Service officials determined that it would be one of 15 legs during the first transcontinental airmail flight on Sept. 8-11, 1920. The 2,680-mile flight was launched on Sept. 8 from Long Island, N.Y., and arrived four days later at Marina Field in San Francisco, Calif. The pilots who flew the route had no charts, maps or instruments, using only a compass, an air speed indicator and their wits. Their groundbreaking flights would eventually spur technological innovations, aeronautical engineering, commercial aviation and the nation’s economy.
Earlier this year, a group of volunteer pilots retraced the historic route on Sept. 8-11 to commemorate the flight’s centennial. They carried about 5,000 commemorative postcards honoring the pilots, airfields and communities that funded them. In total, they reached 16 airports. Unfortunately, bad weather conditions forced one of the pilots to redirect his flight from Iowa City to Waterloo.
Still, thanks to the skill and bravery of the pilots who embarked on the transcontinental flight 100 years ago, Iowa’s place in aviation history is secured. More importantly, the nearly 200 pilots working for the Postal Service from 1918 to 1927 — 34 of whom died on the job — established the airmail service that we enjoy and take for granted today.
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