Spokane takes flight

Felts Field is now known as Spokane’s auxiliary airfield – a buzzing haven for private planes and flight-related businesses, but not exactly the place to catch a 737. Yet for decades this flat patch of riverside turf was the area’s aviation center. Actually, its importance went beyond this region: For a time in the 1920s, it occupied a key place in the nation’s aviation history.

Felts Field’s beginnings were certainly modest. It was a grassy, empty park, next to Upriver Dam on the Spokane River, purchased by the city to protect the water supply.

Then in 1912, B.C. McClellan, a local inventor, moved his self-built airplane out onto this suitably flat field. A pilot hired by McClellan took a brief hop, marking the first flight at the site. The hops got longer until, a few years later, McClellan’s plane went unimaginably far – all the way to Liberty Lake.

He went on to train scores of pilots on this field without ever learning to fly a plane himself. This is not as bizarre as it sounds, since only one person could fit in those early planes.

McClellan taught his students how to use the controls and how to handle the plane on the ground, and then sent them up for short hops. After that, they were on their own.

No wonder piloting was such a dangerous business in those early days.

“It was said with justification that none of the aviators were dying of old age,” McClellan later told a Spokane reporter.

In 1914, the city built an unimpressive nine-hole golf course, Upriver Golf Course, on the site. By 1919, however, more biplanes were flying than birdies. The city closed Upriver Golf Course and few mourned it, because Downriver Golf Course was far superior. Then the city declared the site to be the official city airfield and renamed it Parkwater Field.

In 1924, Parkwater landed a plum that would make it one of the most important airfields in the Northwest. The War Department wanted to establish a national guard air squadron in the region, but was going to grant it to Helena unless one of Washington’s cities came up with a plan and the money to implement it. According to one story, Spokane’s boosters ponied up the money before the government agent had even departed the city limits.

What’s certain is that Spokane aggressively went after the squadron, won it, and by August 1924 Parkwater Field was the home of the 116th Observation Squadron, 41st Division Air Service of the Washington National Guard.

The city organized a work crew of “lazy husbands” (i.e., unemployed men), who cleaned all the rocks off Parkwater Field. Yet it remained, literally, a field. Paved runways were still years in the future.

The field soon grew into an important military installation. By 1934, the adjutant general was quoted as saying, “It makes Spokane the aerial military center of the Northwest, including the coast. The city is far enough inland so there is an element of safety in case of national emergencies affecting the coast.”

The first commanding officer became legendary in local aviation history: Major John T. Fancher. He not only commanded the squadron but he was a tireless booster of Spokane’s aviation industry. (Yes, Fancher Road, near the field, is named after him.)

One of Fancher’s early acts was changing the name of Parkwater to Felts Field, in memory of Lt. James Buell Felts, a young pilot and publisher of the Valley Herald who died in May 1927 in a training flight crash near the airfield.

So by September 1927, the newly renamed Felts Field was ready for what The Spokesman-Review called, with little exaggeration, the “world’s premier air event”: the National Air Races, aka the Spokane Air Derby.

Fancher had helped land this event for Felts Field by flying to New York and later meeting with President Calvin Coolidge.

The month began in spectacular fashion, with a prederby fly-in on Sept. 12 by Charles Lindbergh. Lindbergh, fresh from his transatlantic flight earlier that year, was a superstar rivaled only by Babe Ruth. Thousands showed up at Felts Field to cheer.

The Derby consisted of two big air races: a New York to Spokane race and a San Francisco to Spokane race, both timed to arrive on the afternoon of Sept. 21, 1927.

More than 70 airplanes raced into Felts Field from both directions. First prize in the New York race went to Charles (Speed) Holman with an elapsed time of just under 20 hours.

The Derby also included spectacular air stunts, bombing demonstrations, skywriting and parachute jumps. The attendance figure for the two-day event was reported at more than 60,000. The Spokane Chamber of Commerce decreed it “The Biggest Event in Spokane’s History.”

The next moment of glory for Felts Field came soon after, when Nick Mamer, another Spokane aviation legend, and Art Walker departed in August 1929 in a plane called the Sun God in an effort to win a prize for an endurance flight.

They headed to California, then Chicago, then New York and back. When they returned to Felts Field four days later they had set a record for nonstop flight.

After Mamer died in a 1938 airplane crash, the big art deco clock tower at Felts Field was dedicated as the Nick Mamer Memorial Clock.

As passenger air service developed in the 1920s through the ‘30s, Felts Field became Spokane’s municipal airport. The field was served by Varney Airlines (which later became part of United Airlines) and later by Northwest Airlines.

The first hint that Felts Field would not forever be Spokane’s major airport came in 1939 when plans were announced for a “super-airport” west of Spokane, to be called Sunset Field, with longer runways to handle faster planes.

“Scheduled airline operators will probably be compelled to move from Felts Field,” predicted the Spokane Chronicle in 1939.

War intervened, but by 1946, that prediction proved to be correct. The Department of Defense had acquired Sunset Field in 1941 and converted it into a training facility called Geiger Field.

In 1946, part of Geiger was converted to Spokane’s new municipal airport and most commercial passenger service was moved there from Felts Field. The new field was renamed Spokane International Airport in 1960.

So, today, when Spokane residents say they are “going to the airport,” they mean that big, modern one.

But the old Upriver Golf Course – that’s the place where Spokane’s aerial ambitions first took wing.