History
Vancouver's Pearson Field is one of the nation's oldest operating airfields. Aviation first came to Vancouver in 1905, when Lincoln Beachey flew from Portland in a lighter than air craft and landed on the polo field at the Vancouver Army Barracks. Continuous fixed wing aviation made its debut in 1911, and the facility, dedicated as Pearson Field in 1925, played host to a number of aviation milestones over the years. It remains to this day a busy general aviation airport. The Pearson Air Museum and its Murdock Aviation Center are part of the Vancouver National Historic Reserve.
Situated along the banks of the Columbia River, Fort Vancouver's roots go back to its days as a Hudson's Bay Company post. At the dawn of the twentieth century the Vancouver Barracks, as the post had come to be called, had developed into a bucolic and sometimes sleepy army post complete with its own polo field. On September 19, 1905, however, an event occurred that would lead to the establishment of one of the nation's landmark pioneer airfields. That morning Lincoln Beachey took off in his Baldwin airship from the grounds of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland with a letter for the commandant at Fort Vancouver. Upon landing on the post's polo field Beachey had not only completed the first aerial crossing of the Columbia River, he had also set a new airship endurance record and had been one of the first to ever deliver a letter by airship.
Vancouver fully entered the aviation age six years later when a few Vancouver aeronauts began operating their aircraft from the barracks' grounds. The first of these was a former race car driver named Silas Christofferson. Christofferson had built a Bleirot-type monoplane and later a Curtis-type pusher aircraft. On May 29, 1911, Christofferson began to experiment and tinker with his new machines on the grounds of the barracks. The following year Christofferson made headlines with an aerial exhibition during the 1912 Portland Rose Festival. He had a ramp built on the roof of Portland's Multnomah Hotel and hoisted his small, Curtis-type pusher plane up; he then launched his plane from the hotel's roof and landed across the river at the barracks. (In 1998 Tom Murphy, piloting a replica of Christofferson's Curtiss, recreated the flight from the hotel roof. That plane is now on display in the Pearson Air Museum.) Later in 1912 Walter Edwards brought air mail to the Pacific Northwest. Using the same plane Christofferson used to fly of the Multnomah Hotel, Edwards prepared a mail carrying exhibition from Portland's Waverly Country Club to the field at the Vancouver Barracks. A temporary postal substation was set up on the golf course, and two flights, on August 10 and 11, carried 5000 letters, each postmarked “Portland Aviation Station No. 1.” Once in Vancouver the letters were collected by the Post Office and delivered. Edwards' flight was not the country's first air mail flight, that having been accomplished the year before in New York State, but it does have the distinction of being the first interstate airmail flight as well as being the first in the northwest. 
For the next several years local aeronauts continued to experiment with their ships at the Vancouver Barracks, occasionally having to run off the occasional canvas- munching Army mule. With American entry in the Great War in Europe, however, the usually pastoral airfield would undergo a dramatic transformation.With the United States fully committed to the war effort, there was a significant demand for the materials needed to build airplanes. Spruce, which was light, flexible and straight grained, was ideal for the construction of aircraft frames, and the Pacific Northwest enjoyed an abundance of spruce trees. Labor uncertainties and strife in the woods of the northwest, however, led the government to create the Spruce Production Division within the Army Signal Corps. Colonel Brice Disque was dispatched to Vancouver to oversee the operation. In a matter of weeks his soldier labor force had built the world's largest spruce cut-up mill, supplying the needs of the United States and its overseas allies. At the end of hostilities in November, 1918, spruce production was halted and the mill sold off as surplus. 
With the end of the war a degree of tranquility returned to the field at the Vancouver Barracks, but a new phase in the airfields history was in the offing. The war had taught the army of the importance of aircraft, and in order to keep their planes flying and pilots trained, the Army joined with federal and state forestry officials to begin aerial fire patrols over the region's forests. In 1921 the Army Air Corps established a presence at the barracks field, one of several fire patrol bases in the northwest. To accommodate this new military presence, one of the old spruce plant buildings was moved to serve as an aircraft hangar. This building stands today as Pearson Air Museum's Historic Hangar, the second oldest wooden hangar in the United States.
In 1923 the Army Air Corps presence was expanded when the 321st Observation Squadron of reserves was based at the barracks field. Early the following year Lt. Oakley Kelly was placed in command at the field, and the energetic young flier, holder of an endurance record and the first complete non-stop transcontinental flight, would make substantial improvements to the facilities at the field and enthusiastically support expansion in the civilian commercial sectors. With the army's facilities located at the western boundary of the field, a fledgling civilian sector, known as the Chamber of Commerce field, operated at the eastern end.Shortly after Kelly's arrival the Vancouver barracks field was visited by 4 Douglas biplanes, the United States' entry in an attempt to be the first to fly around the world. The planes were en route from the factory in southern California to their starting point in Seattle. Later that year, in September, the world fliers, having successfully completed their historic flight, again stopped in Vancouver on their way south from Seattle. 
The 321st Observation Squadron quickly settled in to their routine of training flights, and, under the direction of Lt. Kelly, enjoyed major improvements to the field and its support facilities. By 1925, however, the awkward designation Vancouver Barracks Aerodrome had fallen out of favor and a new name as sought. The Army was asked to rename the field Pearson Field in honor of Alexander Pearson, one of the army's brightest young pilots killed the previous year. Pearson was an army test pilot and held numerous flight records, including the transcontinental speed record. He lost his life while preparing for the Pulitzer race in Ohio when a wing strut failed and his plane crashed.
Pearson Field was officially dedicated on September 16, 1925, and to mark the occasion Lt. Kelly organized a large air show. Fifty-six aircraft from across the west converged on Pearson providing the audience of 20,000 a spectacular show of precision flying and parachute drops.Military flights continued to dominate activity at Pearson field until 1926. Government contracts were being let for regular air mail routes, and in late 1925 Pacific Air Transport (PAT) was awarded the contract to carry mail along the west coast. Pearson Field was selected by PAT to service the Portland Post Office, with service between Seattle and Los Angeles inaugurated on September 15, 1926. The regularity and safety record of these early air mail flights quickly evolved into the beginnings of regular commercial passenger service. PAT was later acquired by Boeing Air Transport and would evolve into today's United Airlines. 
The first two decades of Pearson's operation witnessed a number of aviation records and firsts, a pattern that would continue into the future, and the field would welcome many of the nation's aviation heroes, including Charles Lindbergh, Jimmy Doolittle, and Eddie Rickenbacker. During the summer of 1928 the Ford Reliability Air Tour stopped at Pearson Field, giving many local residents their first up-close look at the new, all metal, Ford tri-motor. The following year, on October 18, Pearson Field was party to another aviation milestone when a Soviet built monoplane, named Land of the Soviets, touched down at Pearson Field on its Moscow to New York flight. A second Soviet plane would thrust Pearson Field and Vancouver into the world spotlight. In 1937 a Soviet Ant-25, piloted by Valeri Chkalov, landed at Pearson Field after completing the first trans-polar flight from Moscow. Thousands of spectators descended upon the field to view the now famous aircraft while the intrepid crew members were entertained by the Barracks commander, Gen. George C. Marshall.
For the remainder of the 1930s the army and civilians continued to share Pearson Field, but as decade came to a close much of the airmail and commercial traffic had relocated first to Portland's Swan Island Airport and later to a new facility that has since become Portland International Airport. The Army Reserves continued to train at Pearson until the outbreak of the Second World War, when civilian air traffic on the west coast was curtailed and the 321st Observation Squadron was reassigned. The Air Corps maintained a gravel emergency landing strip at Pearson and the old hangar was used to house Italian prisoners of war. After the war the Army declared Pearson surplus and transferred title to the city of Vancouver.Today Pearson Field remains a bustling general aviation center servicing southwest Washington and Portland pilots and the Pearson Air Museum strives to preserve the region's rich aviation heritage. As part of the Vancouver National Historic Reserve, the Pearson Air Museum joins with its Reserve partners to preserve, document and celebrate more than 180 years of activity in Washington's first community. |
 |
Pearson Air Museum, 1115 E 5th, Vancouver, WA 98661 Main Phone: (360) 694-7026 | Fax: (360) 694-0824 |
|