|-—| FEATURES
Stage and Screen i pfje to
part 4 8 Pages _WASHINGTON, D. C., SUNDAY MORNING, MAY 3, 1936.__
AIRWAYS MAKE WHOLE U. S. A NEARBY VACATION LAND
Interlocking Schedules Worked Out by Airlines to Give Summer Travelers Fullest
Opportunity to See Whole Country in Its Most Alluring Natural Garb.
-a j ■ i ■■■ — ■ ■■■ ■■■■, .. ■ ..- —
By Alice Rogers Hager.
»
I HAVE just flown over America!
Perhaps this doesnt't sound like
a world-shattering event, since
planes and passengers fly daily.
It is news, however, to the extent
that what I have just done thousands
of other Americans will be doing this
Summer. For the first time the air
ways are offering flying vacations for
those who want to reach chosen play
grounds quickly, or "circle tours’’ for
the others who wish, as I did, to get
acquainted with their country in its
, largest sense and to realize the
pageant of its history moving across
•n epic canvas.
All this becomes possible because
American aviation has come of age.
Finding itself possessed of the men
and equipment to make good its offer,
It opens the doors to vacation experi
ences both fantastically beautiful and
exciting. Flight is a miracle in itself,
but flight over the broad reaches of
mountain and desert, canyon and
, city and river-striped valley in this
country we only half know is a more
real miracle. Wisely, the airlines are
making this a co-operative effort, so
that, even if you have only two weeks
to spare, you can plan it in any place
you wish, using several different con
necting lines, if necessary, to get there
end back, with most of your time on
the ground, all for a very reasonable
turn. On the "look-see" I took I cov
ered approximately 12.000 miles in
15 days, but my elapsed flying time
was only three days.
You can fly to some dozen or more
national parks, and over Yellowstone,
If you wish. You can connect with
Pacific Coast steamers to Hawaii, the
Orient, Alaska, the Canal Zone—or
whatever other foreign ports you have
In mind. You can visit the Caribbean
©r South America by air or fly over |
Mexico from either the East or the
West Coast. Is it the Great Lake
...-•;
' resort areas you have In mind? Cen
' tral or Pennsylvania Airlines out of
! the Washington Airport will take you
I there in the course of an afternoon, ;
I or connect you on the way at Pitts* j
! burgh or Cleveland with Transcon
tinental Western Air or United for
the West Coast on the midcontinent
routes.
V'OU can reach Boston and the New
England resorts via American in
some three hours, or Chicago in
slightly over four, connecting there
i with Northwest's scenic route just
south of the Canadian border to
Seattle. American also offers trans
continental service by the mast south
erly way to the Pacific Coast, while
Eastern Air will take you south to
New Orleans or fly you to Miami
to connect with Pan-American.
In other words, it is possible, using
Washington as a starting point and
the airlines which serve it, to achieve
almost any destination in the United [
States or contiguous territory in a !
breath-takingly brief space, for very I
little money, and at the same time !
to find under your wings as you fly j
a United States you only thought you
There's a small matter of aviation t
history concerned here. Why haven't \
we been offered air vacations before?
Because these airways of ours have
been much too busy just growing to
do more than act as postmen or to
ferry busy executives from one office
to another. If some one got aboard
for a joy ride, they sold him a ticket
politely and did their best to make
him comfortable, but with a slightly !
distracted look of having other urgent
matters at hand. Which they had—
tremendously urgent matters of get
ting airports built and lighted air
boulevards laid out for night flying, of I
training their pilots on new and better j
instruments, of stepping the radio up |
from a little one-horse affair to a vital, !
powerful weapon against wind and j
weather—a voice out of darkness and
an eye in a denoe mist.
Always they were thinking in terms
of improvements. “It" had to be good
to begin with, whatever “it" wfas, but
everything was still experimental and
to last “it” had to keep getting better
and better. The primary thing they
had to sell was speed if they were to
earn their way, but back of speed must
lie safety or the speed was of no avail.
With all their preoccupations, they
kept getting busier and busier. It is
recorded in the Salt Lake City Airport
on a tablet there that the first sched
uled passenger service began on May
23, 1926, over Western Air Express,
the pilot being C. N. James. By the
end of 1935, airways under the Amer
ican flag had carried nearly 4.000,000
men, women and children. It has
kept them hopping in every sense of
the word.
AND now the new picture emerges.
They have today some of the best
men and ships in the world. It's my
private opinion we’re not half proud
enough of either. Plenty of countries
buy our planes. You never hear of
an American company flying foreign
ships.
Which gives an added emphasis to
what they are saying now—“See
America first, but see it first from the
air!'*
Suppose you come along with me
and have a preliminary look over the
possibilities. Then you can take your
own map and your own pencil and
plot your course. Is it the first time
you've flowh? Then I’d better tell
you you needn't hold on to your hat.
The stewardess will hang it up neatly
for you by a little wall fastener over
your seat. You can give her your coat,
too. The plane will be warm, no mat
ter how high we soar, but blessedly
cool when groundlings are sweltering.
Taking American Airlines big Doug
las out of the Washingon Airport
about the middle of a sunny after
noon, we settle back to watch the
fields and woods of Virginia merge
into the softly rounded slopes of the
lower Blue Ridge. Everything is brown
still and streaked with snow on the
upper levels (in Summer it will be
green). The sun has gone over to
the right side of the ship as we cross
the Appalachians. Don’t call these
mountains—they are beautiful, but
you'll see mountains later. Neverthe
less. there’s plenty of history here
abouts. Here starts one phase of the
great pageant of American conquest.
Darkness closes in. We can fly all
night in an air pullman or stop over
at Dallas for the Texas Centennial.
Nearly every one is going to do that
on this Southern route. Texas adds a
romantic chapter to our story in the
making, with her heroic Alamo, her
intaglios of old Spain, her Rangers
and Long Homs.
In the early morning we are off
again, and now below us unroll vast
plains that are reminders of cattle
wars and modern ranges. We skim
past majestic El Capitan and into
sight of the storied Rio Grande, with
El Paso and its Mexican neighbor,
Juarez, just over the International
Bridge, and on and up again into the
lower Rockies to Tucson and Phoenix,
garden cities in a desert setting.
JJUT there is one more river to cross
now, the brown Colorado, and we
are over the border into California,
with its Salton Sea lying almost 250
feet below sea level, its faint rim along
the hills bordering this Imperial Val
ley that indicates a far more ancient
sea, its Indian pictographs on the
sands, its spreading date palms and
its movie resort hotels. Here we fly
through lovely San Gorgonio Pass and
at once have left the desert behind to
shoot down valleys green and gold
with orange groves until the sprawl
ing, astonishing City of the Angels
lies at our feet, and we glide down
to earth with the Pacific rumbling
endlessly a few miles away.
There is so much to do and see
hereabouts that I must leave you to
your own choice and stay with my
airship. But let me drop a hint. The
China Clipper is about to take off on
one of its golden quests to the rim of
Par Eastern islands, and one of these
days she’ll be taking passengers as
BY EUGENE L. VIDAL,
Director of Air Commerce,
The plans of a number of air lines to provide vacations by
air is an important step forward in the educational and social
life of the American public. It also marks another milestone
in the remarkable rise of scheduled air passenger transporta
tion since 1929, when it was inaugurated on a passenger
carrying basis.
The air lines of this country first began as mail carriers.
Then the opportunity was extended to the public to fly with
the mail. Gradually it dawned on those air travelers and
others that air transport was an attractive and rapid method
of travel and teas becoming more and more dependable. Today
there is no question about it, judging from the hundreds of
thousands of persons who fly on our air lines annually.
And now the air lines make it possible for one to see prac
tically all of the United States in a tivo-week period or longer;
to stop over at points of special interest; to visit friends in re
mote sections and still reach home within the allotted vacation
time.
It is such steps as these which the air lines are taking to
appeal to the inherent desires of the traveling public that are
winning and will continue to win many new, staunch patrons
and supporters.
well as mail. Flying vacations to the
Orient may be just around the corner.
This steady beat of American wings
goes on and on into new climes, new
scenes, new conquests.
"But we've only started our own ad
venture. An early morning once
; . y. '■
I zling sunlight. Nowhere is the simi
j larity to a ship at sea more marked
{than when an airliner flies above a
heavy log bank.
TJ ERE is a sight that brings a gasp
A ol admiration lor sheer beauty.
■*
more finds us at the airport In Glen- ,
dale. Again it is a Douglas that is
waiting for us, this time with the
Transcontinental, Western Airlines
insignia on its wings. Now we make
a spectacular climb almost straight
up through the ground fog into daz
Snowy mountain tops are visible on
both sides, with this dazzling light
bathing them. They look to our en
chanted gaze like headlands push
ing their points into a foaming ocean.
Then suddenly we are over the ridge
of the Sierra Nevadas, but still far
(1) Starting across the continent. (2) San Francisco Bay
from the air. (3) A 3-mile-a-minute vacation airliner. (4)
Yelloiostone Falls. (5) Flying over Boulder Dam. (6) Over
the Grand Canyon. (7) At a Montana dude ranch. (8) Ma
jestic Mount Shasta from a vacation plane. (9) Summer
ranchers on the trail. (10) Through the San Gorgonio Pass.
(11) Market place in Jaurez, Mexico.
—Photos on this page by Margaret Bourke-White, United and
Northwest Air Lines and Thomas D. McAvoy.
! ahead range after range pushes on,
with the creaming billows thinning
gradually before our prow. In the
distance once more wastelands emerge
and mountain and fog retreat be
hind our swift flight Tere are the
eerie reaches of Death Valley, repos
itory of untold pitiful sagas left in
dehydrated bony heaps on superheated
sands. Later will come the pallette
of the Crazy Giant, who squeezed out
his tubes helter-skelter and left us
the Painted Desert.
Now our “hostess” tells us Boulder
Dam is nearby and all eyes are strain
ed for a first glimpse. We see the
tiny "tailor-made” city of the work
ers, then the lake, already a hundred
miles long, irregular, of a deep opaque
sapphire in the midst of burnt sienna
hills, rising to deepening, towering
cliffs. The pilot dips a wing and flies
1 a half circle and there, 12,000 feet
I below us, is the curved steel and con
I Crete wall that is man's gate against
a hitherto practically untamed river.
: High as it is. it appears a child's toy
from our so much greater height.
We follow the lake almost to the rim
! of an experience for which nothing
I we have ever seen or read has pre
pared us—the Grand Canyon.
This is spectacle beyond all trib
1 ute human words can oiler. The
brain reels at it, the eye is palsied
with its effort to see and comprehend
and absorb. These searching depths,
these tesselated. craggy height*
stretching to the horizon's edge, these
dyes beyond those of Saharan maj
esty may have been the playthings
through millions of years of the gods
of winds and water, but only a Sub
lime Intelligence could have directed
the plan. Stand on the earth beside
it and marvel and be dumb—add
6,000 feet to your stature—stride
along the clouds above it with the
liquid desert sun about you and see
it as you were meant to see. Then
realize that it is your own land!
MOW we drop down into Albu
| 1 ^ querque, with its Spanish founda
j tion in 1701. Indian country lies all
around here, Navajo, Zuni, Hopi and
the shadows of old stage coach and
ponv express days. Just to the nortf
| is Santa Fe and its historic trail.
! Then through the failing afternoon
■ we pass backwards through stages oi
i developing country. Oil derricks yield
to North Texas cattle, the famous
, Cherokee strip of Oklahoma move;
by to display Midwestern farmlands
In darkness we flash over the Mis
, souri and the Mississippi and before
j midnight are homing down over the
| tremendous sparkling treasure box
! at tc fThiraao urfltarincr hpr
tights.
Pause to breathe? But not for long
There will be another ship waiting
in the very early dawn, this time
one of United Airlines' great Boeings,
to shoot us back to the Pacific again,
but at a higher altitude. You think
you’ve seen the country? You haven't
seen half! Plenty of romance in
these names between Chicago and
Cheyenne, along the Oregon Trail,
and at Cheyenne the feel of the
West begins. Yes, it still lives in
spirit and in habit if you get back
country’ enough in here. Prom
Cheyenne north to the Canadian bor
der, here lies the Dude Ranch area.
It is worth a chapter all its own. It
has one, too. in an amusing little
booklet published by the State of
Montana, which says, “If you are a
visitor from the East we want you to
know that, while in the early days a
tenderfoot was known as a pilgrim,
and not so highly prized, we now call
them dudes and ride herd on them.
We don’t shoot at their feet nor put
them on mean broncos out here any
more. Dudes are too valuable to waste
like that.”
It isn't unusual to see a 10-gallon
hat and a pair of chaps holding down
a gangling cowboy around the air
port here. He may be a hangover
from the freedom and the spacious
, ness earlier times, but he still has
j his place, and it isn't only in the
roaring, tumbling excitement of the
rodeo with the shows that made men
like Buffalo Bill and Will Rogers and
girls like Annie Oakley and Prairie
Rose Henderson.
j 'T'HIS is a good place to linger, but
! 1 there's a lot of country ahead.
We mount steeply and realize with
; a shock of pleasure that these are
1 mountains indeed confronting us.
Their heads bev the crown of the
; immutable snows. They are the
gigantic piling masses of the Northern
Rockies, and we are climbing up and
i over the backbone of the Continent.
' Within their uptilted strata is the
| wonderland of the national parks,
! noble Rocky Mountain, curious, ec
centric Yellowstone, heartrendingly
| beautiful Teton, breathless Glacier
' and all their tremendous sisterhood
i whose friendly gates the Federal Gov
I ernment opens to us each year.
Libraries are full of books about this
land and we must compress it into
sentences. Over the trail of the Mor
mon pilgrims we glide through into
Salt Lake City, with the crusted shores
of the lake itself beyond. No pause
now, but on like an arrow across the
i amazing body of water—this dead sea
! that will one day be as dry as the
1 salt desert around it. Now over the
j tracks of the covered wagons, playing
tag with the clouds through Emigrant
Pass, we make a spectacular brief de
scent into Reno and a few moments
later are busily licking our fingers
over fried chicken 10,000 feet or so
‘‘up” while we dash off the last couple
of hundred miles into San Francisco
to circle above its teeming harbor,
spanned by the arches of the world's
greatest bridge.
There are two ways into Seattle.
One up the redwood-crested slopes of
the Pacific, the other through the dra
matic reaches of the Columbia River
gorge, which we would have to make
from Salt Lake again as a base. Ar
rived by the way of our choice in the
‘ Evergreen State.” our fellow Wash
ington. we find a new and different
playground waiting. Log rafts milling
through the famous locks bring their
story of the North woods; fishing
boats at the wharves or the sight of
glazed salmon stacked like cordwood
in the municipal terminal tell of the
tumbling waters from which they
came. Shining fleets of sailing craft
of every vintage and character riffle
the surfaces of the lakes and the
sound.
DUT it is when we leave Seattle
early the next morning, flying a
Northwest Airlines' slim Lockheed
Electra that the true magic of this
scene is disclosed. There is a final
glorious view of Puget Sound and then
on our right, thrusting its hoary head
above a light foam of clouds, august
Rainier stands alone before a pale
golden sky. Fujiyama has a smoother
cone, but Rainier the same aloof
Olympian quality. Trailing the hori
zon beyond, twined with a necklace of
mist, the mighty Cascades rear up. .
The sunlight strikes along their line
of snows to make an unforgettable pic
ture. By way of contrast, a vagrant
cloud baby, a veritable puff ball of va
por. floats by your window with an im
pudent flick of heels. Until afternoon
we shall have one magnificent range
after another passing us in review.
Did I promise you mountains? There
will be the Coeur d'Alenes of Idaho,
the copper-impregnated crest of the
Continental Divide at Butte (Ana
conda nearby), the shining Bitter
Roots, jagged Bridger (named for old
Scout Jim), the Crazies with their
I tributaries the Cayuse Hills, and
finally, beyond Livingston, the Bear
Tooths—these names tell stories.
What they do not tell is that this is
| primitive world. No flat surfaces here.
Everywhere is evidence of the ponder
ous upthrusts of volcanic forces from
the earth's bowels. These contours
may have been worn by millenniums
of erosion: they may bear ever so deep
their powdery mantle of Winter, but
(Continued on Second Page.)