Orville and Wilbur Wright first pierced the skies of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, with their engine-powered aircraft on December 17, 1903, fulfilling their dream of becoming the first to successfully pilot a propeller-driven winged aircraft. Their dream of flight first gained lift when their father bought them a toy helicopter with a rubber band-powered rotter while the family was living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1878.
As humans came closer to controlled flight before the dawn of the twentieth century, dozens of researchers, engineers, and inventors worked independently and collectively to stabilize winged glider flight and to incorporate sustained power propulsion. Skepticism of the brothers’ success with the Wright Flyer, the name they gave their experimental aircraft, would not begin to fade until 1906-08 as American and European critics started to witness firsthand manmade flying machines. It was during this time a new type of adventurer was born – the barnstorming test pilot.
Lincoln Beachey was just such an adventurer. Beachey first tasted flight in the same year the Wright brothers achieved success at Kitty Hawk – 1903 – when Beachey went on a hot air balloon ride in San Francisco. From there it would only be a matter of eight short years before Beachey was flying his airplane in Dubuque, Iowa, at Nutwood Park, future site of Dubuque’s first airport. At the time, Nutwood Park was a popular mile-long horse racing track in the Midwest.
Beachey was already a world record holder when he first flew over the skies of Dubuque as part of the Curtis Exhibition Company’s aviation meet on September 28 and 29, 1911. The Dubuque Telegraph-Herald reported “all of the Curtis aviators are using the new model high powered Curtis bi-plane, the safest and most dependable aeroplane of all.” The Curtis birdmen had performed over 200 exhibitions in cities across the United States performing aerobatic feats and firsts. The year 1911 saw the 24-year-old Lincoln Beachey become the first person to recover from a spinning nosedive of his aircraft, successfully performing a dead-stick landing. In June, Beachey performed another first when he flew his Curtis biplane through the mist of Niagara Falls, dropping down to the surface of the Niagara River gorge and flying under the Honeymoon Bridge connecting Niagara Falls, Ontario, with Niagara Falls, New York. Beachey set the world record for highest altitude on August 20 at the Chicago aviation meet, flying to an altitude of 11,628 feet before running out of gasoline and safely gliding back to earth.
Pictured: Sep. 11, 1911, Dubuque Telegraph-Herald advertisement for Dubuque’s introduction to flying machines at the city’s first aviation meet.
After observing Beachey at an aviation meet in late summer, Orville Wright proclaimed, “I consider Lincoln Beachey the most skillful aviator at the present meet. He is apparently sensational and spectacular, but he is always safe.”
On September 28, over 3,000 spectators made their way to Nutwood Park despite rain to watch Lincoln Beachey introduce aviation to the people of the Tri-State area. The Telegraph-Herald reported that many in the crowd were disappointed in the underwhelming size of the Curtis biplane. The plane wings, resembling a box kite, spanned four feet in width. The flying wonder measured 15 feet in length. The eight cylinder, four-cycle water-cooled engine produced about 80 horsepower. The plane’s large wooden propeller was eight feet in diameter.
The Telegraph-Herald described the scene of the first airplane take off in Dubuque history.
“Slowly at first, but with its speed increasing rapidly, the machine left its place, and, after running about a hundred yards, was seen to tilt backwards as the front wheel came off the ground. For an instant it ran on the two rear wheels and then these too left the ground and the machine was in the air. That, perhaps, was the most wonderful part of the whole exhibition, seeing the machine actually leave the ground. As the plane rose into the air like a big bird a cheer broke from the crowd as an involuntary tribute to man’s mastery of the air.”
Beachey thrilled the crowd with the plane’s ability to climb, dive, and turn. Beachey bested five motorcycles in a race against his biplane around the one-mile horse track at Nutwood Park. Flying in the rain, Beachey ascended into the clouds to the amazement of the crowd. Minutes later, the plane reappeared as it again amazed the crowd by descending and softly landing on the ground. Day one of the Dubuque air meet was a success.
Day two saw 20,000 people funnel into the Couler Valley and Nutwood Park to see Beachey perform aerobatics, race an automobile, and participate in a mock battle with Company A of the Iowa Nation Guard. Beachey caught Co. A off guard by flying over the hilltop and surprising the men from 2,000 feet and dropping his “bomb,” a loaf of bread, on the Company, striking one of the soldiers in the head. During one of his three flights that day, Beachey flew from Nutwood Park to downtown Dubuque, turning over the 4th Street Elevator and passing over the Julien Hotel before heading back north to Nutwood Park to the delight of many Dubuquers who could not make it out to the park, which was located near the present-day intersection of Central Avenue and South John Deere Road.
Although Beachey did not set a new record during his two days in Dubuque in 1911, the aviation meet did. The Telegraph-Herald reported, “There were more automobiles in Dubuque Friday than ever before in the history of the town and it is probable every one of them was at the park.”
Pictured: Postcard with image of Lincoln Beachey flying his Curtis biplane over Nutwood Park in Dubuque, Iowa, during one of his aviation shows in 1911 or 1912.
My archive image titled “Beachy (sic) Amazing Dubuquers” was taken by an unknown photographer in 1911 or 1912. The image is taken facing east and the bluffs lining the Couler Valley. You can see the whitewashed wooden fence below the bluffs that encircled the Nutwood racetrack. On the side of the hill and top of the bluff you see dozens of spectators who decided to forgo paying admission to Nutwood Park and simply watched from the natural amphitheater provided by the bluff. In the foreground are the capped heads of four gentlemen in attendance inside Nutwood Park. Overhead flies Beachey in his Curtis biplane like a bald eagle soaring through the valley. The image of the first airplane to grace the skies of Dubuque was sold as a post card declaring, “Beachy Amazing Dubuquers.”
Beachey would dazzle Dubuque crowds with three visits to Nutwood Park in 1911, 1912, and 1914 before meeting an untimely death at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in March of 1915, when his plane’s airframe suffered catastrophic damage, plummeting Beachey into San Francisco Bay in front of 250,000 witnesses.
[FROM THE ARCHIVES is a periodical focusing on interesting stories behind artifacts in the Library of John T. Pregler.]