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Monday, March 18, 2024
March 18, 2024

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Off Beat: Pioneer had unique perspective on Fort Vancouver

By , Columbian Science, Military & History Reporter
Published:

When a 94-year-old pioneer flew from Vancouver in 1924, retracing his Oregon Trail route in a DeHavilland biplane, it was an example of a historic figure going full circle.

Maybe the same thing is true for a DeHavilland biplane.

The National Park Service recently bought a 1918 DeHavilland DH-4B Liberty for display at Pearson Air Museum.

The DeHavilland Liberty echoes several chapters of Vancouver-area history. In 1918, an Army lumber mill at Vancouver Barracks produced the majority of aircraft-grade spruce used to build American warplanes. Some spruce airplane components are on display at Pearson Air Museum right now, including a wing section.

Vancouver Barracks cut 70 percent of the spruce used in American planes during World War I, museum manager Bob Cromwell said. It’s highly likely that some of the material in that wing section — as well as in the historic aircraft just purchased for Pearson — was milled here 96 years ago.

After the war, a central figure in Vancouver aviation history flew a DeHavilland DH-4. Army Lt. Oakley Kelly was the first commanding officer of the Army Air Service’s 321st Observation Squadron, based at Pearson Field from 1923 to 1941. Kelly was quite a showman, said Bill Alley, local aviation historian and author.

Ox, rail, auto and air

Funding was cut after WWI and Kelly had a series of exploits that kept the air service in the headlines, Alley told The Columbian in 2010. One featured Ezra Meeker, who first crossed the country in 1852 with an ox-drawn covered wagon.

Meeker repeated his Oregon Trail trek several times, including trips by automobile and train. In 1924, Kelly invited Meeker to come along on a flight to Dayton, Ohio.

Meeker certainly had a unique perspective on what now is Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, Cromwell said. According to 1924 accounts, Meeker said that the fort stockade he visited 72 years earlier had stood in the general vicinity of Pearson’s runway. (The current stockade is a reconstruction.)

In one concession to his age, according to reports, Meeker removed his false teeth before each takeoff and put them in his pocket.

Alley found a quote from Kelly after the flight. The pilot said: “Meeker is all right. The only trouble he gave me on the entire trip was when we stopped. Meeker always wanted to go on.”

Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.

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Columbian Science, Military & History Reporter