This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2006, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
On the ridge between the St. George airport and Bloomington, you can find a large concrete arrow pointing northwest. It's just one of several arrows still scattered between Salt Lake and Los Angeles, remnants of early air adventures.
Picture this: a pilot wearing a leather jacket, goggles pushed up on his forehead, climbs into the open cockpit of a biplane. In the back cockpit sit bags of mail, 400 pounds worth. The mission? To fly the mail safely over the mountains, valleys, and deserts between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. The pilot will find his way by looking for an arrow every 10 miles or so. The St. George arrow will route him around the Pine Valley Mountains as he heads north.
Salt Lake City was a stop on the country's first transcontinental airmail route, which went from Chicago to San Francisco and started service in 1920. The fledgling airmail service had some sad consequences: 35 of the 200 pilots who flew the mail between 1918 and 1926 died in crashes. The route into Salt Lake City was especially dangerous. One pilot wrote that the route "from [Cheyenne] to Salt Lake City is a good one to kill the men that you seem to have a grudge against."
In December 1922, Henry Boonstra, piloting a de Haviland, was flying under a low layer of clouds when a gust of wind slammed the plane onto 9,400-foot-high Porcupine Ridge, near Coalville. The plane slid to a stop. Boonstra climbed out and started to walk toward civilization. Soon he was foundering in waist-high snow.
"I used the bag in one hand and a stuffed pair of trousers in the other hand to help support my weight in the snow and started crawling down the slope," he wrote. He kept crawling all day and night in freezing temperatures until he finally reached a farmhouse.
"I had food and water, my flying clothes taken off, my feet soaked and rubbed in snow, and went to bed." Two days later he felt well enough to ride 10 miles to the nearest telephone to let the world know he was alive.
A month later, Boonstra's engine quit as he tried to fly above a snowstorm in the Wasatch. Once again he survived the crash. But this time he had brought snowshoes along and walked out.
In April 1926, Western Air Express (later Western Airlines) started flying the mail from Salt Lake to Los Angeles. Five weeks later, the mail plane, a Douglas M-2 biplane, carried the first air passengers between the cities. The two passengers had to squeeze into the cockpit with the mailbags. For a one-way fare of $90 (a huge amount at the time), they received box lunches, leather helmets, goggles, parachutes, a tin can to use as a urinal, a quick stop in Las Vegas, and a safe arrival in Los Angeles at 5:30 p.m.
By the end of the year, Western Air Express had flown 209 passengers between Salt Lake and Los Angeles. When they saw that a profit could be turned, other air companies followed suit, and commercial aviation "took off." The airfield (now Salt Lake's municipal airport) added landing lights, a paved runway, and passenger amenities: a mimeograph machine to print tickets and safety instructions and a coffee pot.
Salt Lake City also upgraded its directional aids. In 1928, the LDS Church let the city paint "Salt Lake Airport" and an arrow in 30-foot-high white letters on the Salt Lake Tabernacle. Pilots who once had to circle the city looking to spot the airport now could hardly miss it. The sign remained in place at least until the late 1940s.
Today, of course, all that has changed. But the ease with which we now can fly all over the world - e-tickets, pilot salary negotiations and airport security - all had their beginnings with the U.S. Postal Service, a few entrepreneurs and a group of courageous pilots.
Kristen Rogers-Iversen lives and writes in Salt Lake City.
Sources: Crossroads of the West: Aviation Comes to Utah, 1910-40 by Roger D. Launius, Utah Historical Quarterly 58:2; Smithsonian National Postal Museum Web site; Flying Machines over Zion: Aviation Comes to Utah, 1910-1919, by Anthony Paul Martini, on Hill Air Force Base Museum Web site; interview with Creed Evans, March 21, 2006.