The dream of flight is as old as humanity.  The appeal of cresting the Sierra Nevada in some sort of winged contraption was immediate as soon as human air travel became possible.  Today, flights over the Sierra Nevada are a commonplace, everyday event.  But, in the pioneering days of aviation, these voyages were heroic adventures.

The aspiration arrived early.  During the California Gold Rush in the 1850s, entrepreneurs advertised trips to the Gold Country in “aerial locomotives,” steam-powered machines carrying as many as 100 passengers at up to 100 miles per hour.  The owners promised a pleasant trip and convivial conversation.  The device did not exist.  Nice dream, though.

Experiments in glider flights occurred near Luther Pass in the 1890s, but actual attempts to cross the Sierra by motorized aircraft did not occur until 1911.  The trips were extremely perilous.  Even with today’s more powerful airplanes, the Sierra Nevada is forbidding – rarefied air, turbulent cross currents, and unexpected updrafts make the crossings constantly dangerous.  As the first pilots soon discovered, early aircraft were underpowered and flimsy.  This made the flights even more dangerous.

The first pilot to endeavor flight across the Sierra was Bob Fowler in 1911.  Fowler was competing for a $50,000 prize for the first transcontinental flight.  The prize was to be rewarded for the first pilot to successfully complete the flight in thirty days.   Fowler attempted a route that would traverse Donner Pass.  But, enroute, near Colfax, his airplane, a Wright Flyer, flipped in blustery winds and crashed into the trees.  Fowler was briefly marooned in the treetops, but escaped injury.  His plane was repaired in ten days.  Fowler tried again.  Three more times, in fact.  Each time he failed.  Finally, he flew south to Los Angeles, crossed the desert and flew across country.  He did not win the award – his flight took forty-five days.

The first to successfully fly over Mount Whitney in the Southern Sierra was Silas Cristofferson in 1914.  He was triumphant on his second attempt.  On his first attempt, he was accompanied by a movie photographer who was recruited to document the historic event.  The camera operator would make the flight straddling the gas tank.  During the flight, crosscurrents disabled the plane and it plunged like a stone from 10,000 feet in altitude to a mere 1800 feet.  Cristofferson righted the plane and landed safely He made plans to try again after a two day respite.  Understandably, upon sober reflection, the cameraman refused to make the second attempt.

Lyman Gilmore of Grass Valley claimed to be the first to fly a powered aircraft – not the first over the Sierra Nevada, but the first ever.  Gilmore had experimented with flight for years. In the late 1890s, Gilmore had constructed a glider with an 18-foot wingspan. When pulled by a horse, the glider could fly. On its first flight, Gilmore borrowed his employer’s horse as the power source for the contraption. It soared, but the horse was terrified, and Gilmore was fired. In 1902, Gilmore built a 32-foot plane that was powered by a steam engine. At that time, no one had yet attained mechanized flight. In May of that year, Gilmore claimed that he successfully flew his steam airplane-well in advance of the Wrights. Few, if any, witnesses claimed to be present and many doubted whether Gilmore had flown. Most believed the heavy device had never left the ground.

When it was confirmed that the Wright Brothers had actually flown in 1903, Gilmore was crestfallen. He continued experimenting, however, and soon afterward produced a large fuselage, enclosed cabin monster that no contemporary engine on earth could have possibly lifted. Gilmore continued to press his claim that he was the first to fly, but few credited him. He did have a more substantial argument that he had built the first commercial airport in the world. Others more modestly felt Gilmore’s airfield was more likely to have been the first airport in the United States or in the West, but this documented accomplishment was significant regardless of scope.

On May 27, 1919, the first plane to land in Yosemite Valley was piloted by an Army Lieutenant.  The second successful landing did not occur until four years later in December 1923.

Free as a Bird – images

1 – Bob Fowler preparing for flight in 1911
2 – Fowler’s wrecked airplane
3 – Silas Cristofferson celebrates his successful flight over Mount Whitney in 1914.
4 – Lyman Gilmore’s airport – The Gilmore Aerodrome – in 1907
5 – Gilmore’s 1898 schematic drawing of his “flying machine”
6 – The first airplane to land in Yosemite Valley.  The year? 1919.
7 -- The artist C.E. Madeley created “Mr. Golightly” in the mid-19th century to lampoon air travel

Images Credits: 

1 and 2 – Collection of the California State Library, Sacramento, California
3 – From the Collection of Russ Johnson, Bishop, California
4 and 5 – Collections of the California Historical Society, San Francisco, California
6 – Collections of the National Park Service, Washington, D.C. 
7 – Collections of the Museum of Science and Society, United Kingdom