on a chain. Early pilots and others in Alaska often wore laced leather knee boots.
1
Ben Eielson Arrives at Fairbanks
Born at Hatton, North Dakota, in 1897, Carl Ben Eielson arrived in Fairbanks in 1922 to teach English and science in the high school and to coach the basketball team.
As a boy he was fascinated with airplanes, and decided he wanted to be a pilot. His father, Ole, a Hatton businessman, was opposed to the idea. “Too dangerous,” he said.
Ben graduated from the Hatton high school and entered the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks, where he sang in the glee club, played cornet in the band, and joined the debating club. He transferred to the University of Wisconsin briefly, and in January, 1917, despite concerns of his father, he enlisted in the U.S. Signal Corps, Aviation Section, at Fort Omaha, Nebraska. In June, 1918, he transferred to the School of Military Aeronautics, University of California, Berkeley for eight weeks of ground school prior to flight training. He was then sent to Mather Field, near Sacramento, where he learned to fly. He was commissioned second lieutenant in the Aviation Section of the U.S. Signal Corps, and had orders to sail for France. The war ended, and his orders to France were cancelled.
Second Lieutenant Carl Ben Eielson when assigned to the Aviation Section of the U.S. Signal Corps. He was honorably discharged in 1919, and remained in the Signal Officers Reserve Corps.
He remained at Mather Field, and in March, 1919, he was honorably discharged as a Second Lieutenant, Signal Officers Reserve Corps. He chose to remain in the reserve corps.
THE HATTON AERO CLUB
Back home in Hatton, Ben worked in his father’s store, joined the American Legion, and talked aviation to anyone who would listen. His enthusiasm resulted in formation of the Hatton Aero Club during the winter 1919–20, which purchased a military surplus Model J1 Jenny for $2,485.
With this airplane Ben barnstormed in North Dakota that summer and flew to small town fairs for exhibition flights, which included acrobatics (aerobatics today). Eielson was reputedly an adroit stunt pilot.
That fall at Climax, Minnesota, while taking off from a muddy field, he wrapped one of the wings of the Jenny around a telephone pole. The plane dropped to the ground, one wing and the landing gear destroyed. Eielson was unhurt. The wrecked plane was hauled back to Hatton and the Hatton Aero Club was dissolved.
Ben rebuilt the damaged wing and landing gear, installed a new engine, and brought the Jenny back to flying status. He flew it to Grand Forks and re-entered the University of North Dakota. On weekends he barnstormed with the Jenny.
He graduated from the University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in June, 1921. That summer, two other WWI-trained pilots, Charles W. “Speed” Holman (who became a famed racing pilot later in life; Holman Field, St. Paul, Minnesota, honors his name), and Frank Talcott, joined Ben in barnstorming and aerial stunting exhibitions with the Jenny.
AT FAIRBANKS
Ben sold the Jenny at the end of summer, 1921, and signed up for postgraduate law courses at Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C. To help pay his way, he worked on the Capitol Police Force as a guard in the U.S. House Office Building. There he met Dan Sutherland, Alaska’s voteless delegate to Congress. He spent many hours visiting with Sutherland, mostly talking aviation with him. From Sutherland, Ben learned of a job opening for a high school teacher at Fairbanks in the fall of 1922. He applied for the job and was hired.
The Fairbanks he arrived at had a population of 1,155, and was the center of a gold mining district. When cold weather arrived in late October and November, miners from surrounding areas moved to town for the winter. The town was also the center for gathering raw furs, a secondary but important industry across Alaska. Homes were mostly log cabins, although frame buildings dominated the business district. There were seven hotels, eight restaurants, four dance halls. Electricity provided lighting for the town. Water was delivered by horse-drawn wagon in summer, and sled in winter.
Outhouses were common. Streets were unpaved, and there were more dog teams than cars. Winter sled trails to villages, mines, and trapping areas spiderwebbed from Fairbanks. In summer, a few cars traveled between coastal Valdez and Fairbanks on the Richardson Highway, an upgraded wagon trail that penetrated the great Alaska Range. There were 206 autos in private ownership in Fairbanks. The speed limit on the “highways” was twenty-five miles an hour. In winter, horse-drawn double-ender sleds traveled between Fairbanks and coastal Valdez. Roadhouses, roughly thirty miles apart, provided food and overnight accommodations. However, the Alaska Railroad, the northernmost railroad in North America, with 470 miles of rail from coastal Seward to Fairbanks, was completed in 1923, all but ending traffic to and from Valdez.
Living costs at Fairbanks ran somewhat higher than those in the states. Alex Simson’s Department Store, opposite the Nordale Hotel on Second Street, advertised in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner blue chambray work shirts for seventy-five cents, heavy pure wool socks for twenty-five cents. A suit of Medlicott wool underwear cost six dollars fifty cents. The Cut Price Store (which advertised, “Highest prices paid for raw furs”), sold heavy wool pants for five dollars; fine dress pants were seven dollars fifty cents. Stag wool shirts were six dollars fifty cents. Fairbanks merchants didn’t accept coins smaller than twenty-five cents.
Eielson’s Norwegian heritage proclaimed itself with his blue eyes and blond hair, already thinning at 25 when he arrived at Fairbanks. He stood a sturdy 5 feet 10 inches, and weighed 165 pounds. He was one of three teachers in the Fairbanks two-story, red, frame-built school, which, that fall had forty-eight students. Eielson was friendly, easy-to-meet, pleasant. He quickly made many friends in this tiny frontier town.
His students quickly learned if they could get him talking about airplanes, or aviation in general, he might take up a full hour period on the subject. Aviation, and the future of it, dominated his thoughts. Though he was new to the Territory, he already dreamed of a future when airplanes would provide passenger and freight service throughout Alaska. He even envisioned mail and passenger flights across Alaska to Siberia, and beyond to Europe.
His ideas were far ahead of the abilities of aircraft of the time; there were no airports as such needed for their support.
FAIRBANKS’ FIRST AIRPLANES
The first airplane ever at Fairbanks was a Gage-Martin biplane powered by an eight-cylinder Hall-Scott motor. It was owned and flown by its designer, James Martin, who was accompanied to Fairbanks by his aviatrix wife, Lily.
To transport their airplane to Fairbanks its wings were removed and crated. The Martins and their airplane traveled by ship from Seattle to Skagway. From there they rode the White Pass Railroad to Whitehorse. Next, the Martins and their plane went by river steamer down the Yukon to Tanana, and up the Tanana River to Chena, and up Chena Slough to Fairbanks.
The little airplane flew at about 45 mph, and between July 3 and 5, 1913, Martin made five flights with it from Fairbanks’ edge-oftown Exposition Park. The longest flight lasted fourteen minutes.
Next, on August 19, 1920, the four De Havilland DH-4B biplanes of the U.S. Army’s Black Wolf Squadron arrived in Fairbanks on their highly-publicized month-long New York to Nome flight. They were greeted by an enthusiastic crowd.
The squadron left for Nome the next day. After reaching Nome, they turned back, and again stopped briefly in Fairbanks on their
