7/19/2010:
One hundred years ago, airplanes were called "aeroplanes," and pilots were known as "aviators;" or as "birdmen" because they were flying like a bird. Powered flight, once just a dream, had become a reality.
After the Wright Brothers flew successfully in 1903, the winds of change began to whisper across the nation. Brave souls answered the call of aviation. One of those early aviators was Archie Hoxsey from Pasadena, California. The Wright Brothers hired Hoxsey to make exhibition flights in a Wright Brothers aircraft in cities across the U.S. in 1910.
Hoxsey made the first powered flight in North Dakota on this date in 1910 at the Grand Forks Fairgrounds. Both Hoxsey and his Wright Flyer aircraft came to the city by train, because those undependable early planes could not be safely flown between cities.
When it was time to fly, Hoxsey started his engine and the unmuffled exhaust, according to a news report, sounded "like a fusillade of pistol shots."
Hoxsey accelerated his aeroplane along a "monorail starting track . . . with the speed of an express train" until the machine lifted "smoothly and gracefully into the air." The crowd of ten thousand, wrote the Grand Forks Herald, collectively "took a big breath and then gave vent to a GREAT cheer."
Hoxsey flew for sixteen minutes, "circling high in the air, rising and dipping toward the earth, wheeling easily and gracefully," making figure eights in the skies over Grand Forks. The spectators would "never forget the experience" of seeing a man fly. They were awed by the pilot who sat in the "seat of dizzy danger," in a contraption made of wood; with cloth-covered wings; held together by piano wire.
The newspaper told of an eight-six-year-old man who closely observed "every movement" of the "work of getting the aeroplane" ready for flight. When "the aeroplane went up slowly but surely, he rose suddenly to his feet, rubbed his eyes to be sure that they were not deceiving him, and as the machine soared upward and around like a giant bird; he laughed like a schoolboy and the tears — tears occasioned by pure delight and by the realization of the hope of years, coursed down his cheeks as he watched" Hoxsey make his "thrilling maneuvers."
The elderly man was "approaching the end of life, and [was] intensely interested in the wonders of science," and now he had seen the "brain of man accomplish another marvel" — the conquest of the air. Another observer, E.E. Cole, of Fargo, said: "no one has ever seen a more beautiful flight in the world."
Sadly, Archie Hoxsey died in a crash in Los Angeles just six months later, one of an incredibly-high total of 32 American pilots who perished that year. But Hoxsey would be fondly remembered for the way in which he had stirred wonder within the hearts and minds of North Dakotans on this day one hundred years ago.
Written by Steve Hoffbeck, History Department, MSU Moorhead.
Sources:
"Thousands Delighted By Successful Aeroplane Flight," Grand Forks Daily Herald, July 20, 1910, p. 1.
"Comments Made by Those Who Saw Hoxsey Aviate," Grand Forks Daily Herald, July 20, 1910, p. 1.
"Comments Made by Those Who Saw Hoxsey Aviate," Grand Forks Daily Herald, July 21, 1910, p. 1.
"Hoxsey's Plunge to Death," New York Times, January 1, 1911, p. 2.
"Moisant and Hoxsey Famed as Aviators, Fall to Their Death," Minneapolis Morning Tribune, January 1, 1911, p. 1.
Deaths in aviation 1910 in Steven R. Hoffbeck, "Shooting Star: Aviator Jimmie Ward of Crookston," Minnesota History, vol. 54, no. 8, Winter 1995, p. 336.
"Arch Hoxsey the Aviator is On Deck," Grand Forks Daily Herald, July 19, 1910, p. 6.
W.P. Davies, "That Reminds Me," Grand Forks Herald, January 7, 1930, p. 4.
"Immense Crowd Saw Truly Wonderful Aeroplane Flight," Grand Forks Daily Herald, July 21, 1910, p. 1.
"Thousands Delighted By Two Flights of the Aeroplane," Grand Forks Daily Herald, July 22, 1910, p. 1.
"Race Between Wright Aeroplane and an Automobile a Feature," Grand Forks Daily Herald, July 23, 1910, p. 1.