A blog is kind of like a newspaper column. Posts pile up as they're written, by date, one atop the other. Over time it becomes more difficult to find certain articles. A book organizes content by chapter and subject, but a blog is more like one long, unordered scroll.
Thus, I've created this index as a Table of Contents. The titles below are links that will take you directly to the story.
Saturday, August 13, 1927 was a memorable day for Pete Fraser. Enjoying their new 1926 Chevy (Dr. Ferguson’s old car), the family motored to the summer fair in Sarles, North Dakota. It wasn’t far, only 21 miles (34.4 km) due south of Pilot Mound, and less than four miles (6.44 km) across the border.
Founded in 1905, Sarles was named after the state’s governor. [Google maps]
Pete knew the way. Sarles, at the terminus of a branch of the Great Northern Railway, was just off the route to Hannah, seven miles (11 km) to the east, at the end of another branch line. In earlier years, Pete drove his horse and wagon to Hannah. Better grain prices were a draw, but so was the presence of Miss Annie Reid. Another factor was a more practical one: at times there was a shortage of railway cars in their own district and elevators were full. [1]
The small town of Sarles had a long row of elevators, representing several grain companies. [2]
It’s easy to imagine Pete in this lineup of Canadians delivering grain to Sarles. [3]
“Farmers shipping wheat, Dickinson, N.D.” [4]
Sarles grew quickly since its founding in 1905. Within a year it boasted 34 business enterprises and a population over 400. Like many enterprising prairie towns, it was prosperous and self-sufficient.
Not every new prairie town had an opera house. [5]
The layout of Sarles around a square is different than most of the towns in North Dakota. This came about because most of the settlers came from England and Scotland and this design they preferred. The business places surround the square and the residential dwellings in turn surround them. [6]
Downtown Sarles in its early days. [7]
“Southwest corner of the Village Square. Note the elevated sidewalks.” [8]
Sarles after 1917, when the school (upper left) was built. [9]
There was a lot of cross-border traffic in the region. In 1923, a customs official in Sarles reported “that during the month of July alone he had cleared 3,000 persons who were touring and coming through to Manitoba.” [10]
The town square is clearly evident in this aerial shot of Sarles. [11]
Alas, Sarles was to decline in subsequent years, like so many other small railway towns. In the 1900s there were over 2000 grain elevators in North Dakota. By 2016 485 remained. With better vehicles and roads, train traffic dried up. Railways consolidated and closed routes that were no longer profitable. Small branch lines could no longer accommodate heavier railway cars and longer trains. Farmers used bigger grain trucks to haul on their own schedules. [12]
Settlements like Hannah and Sarles have been reduced to virtual ghost towns. The population of Sarles in 2024 was 16, while Hannah’s was less than 10. Clues to their once-busy and prosperous roots are long gone.
In the past, Hannah and Sarles had been vibrant, thriving towns. As roads and vehicles improved in the 1920s there was much traffic and goodwill among the border towns in the area. Celebrations in Sarles included Dominion Day on July 1 as well as Independence Day on July 4. Summer fairs, concerts, dramas, baseball tournaments, horse races, and other social events routinely drew visitors back and forth.
A dance in Pilot Mound in 1923 featured the Sarles Orchestra, from their Opera House, no doubt. [13]
On July 19, 1923, when Pilot Mound hosted a Peace Day Celebration commemorating the Peace Treaty ending WWI, Americans joined the festivities. It was a successful day, with plenty of attractions. Baseball teams from Sarles and Pilot Mound tied, shook hands, and split the prize money. Harness racing was especially lucrative for Gordon Fraser, whose horses Billie Democracy and Minnie Duff were big winners.
In the 1920s, fairs in towns like Pilot Mound and Crystal City were sure to include American baseball teams. That guaranteed a good crowd, putting a smile on the face of Pete Fraser, Vice-President of the Pilot Mound Agricultural Society. [14]
In 1925 the four-day Cavalier County Fair in Langdon, North Dakota concluded with “Canadian Day.” It featured horse races and a livestock parade (always of interest to their northern neighbours), as well as entertainment from Morden’s band and a game of lacrosse played by Canadian teams. Gordon raced over two days, earning several hundred dollars driving speedy horses Billie Democracy and Hazel Melrose. Cheering him on, Pete and Annie Fraser reported a “splendid time, an excellent Fair—and most courteous treatment to Canadian visitors.” [15]
The Sentinel welcomed this observation in the Cavalier County newspaper:
At the meeting of the stockholders of the Cavalier County Fair held on Thursday afternoon of last week, attention was called to the very large patronage given the fair by our Canadian friends from across in Manitoba, who are within automobile distance of Langdon. This attendance from Manitoba is annually increasing and all enjoy the visit from the Canadians. […] It was further decided that the officers of the fair should acquaint themselves with the dates of events across in Manitoba. [16]
This 1925 ad in the Sentinel included a unique sales pitch: the chance to win a car at Hannah’s baseball tournament. [17]
Barnstormers
In 1926 the Cavalier County Fair in Langdon included another successful Canadian Day, as well as an exciting new attraction: “Two Flying Machines in spectacular stunt flying.” [18] The barnstormers were coming!
Barnstorming was a form of entertainment in which stunt pilots used to make the craziest things in the air to attract an audience: dangerous spins, loops and the barrel roll, stall turns and wing overs while reckless aerialists performed crazy stunts like switching from a plane to another, wing walking, parachuting and even playing tennis. Either individually or in groups, called flying circuses, they used to entertain crowded fields of people paying the tickets for a show or a plane ride. This soon became one of the most popular attractions in the United States during the Roaring Twenties. [19]
Barnstorming had begun in rickety biplanes before World War I, only a few years after the Wright Brothers’ famed 1903 flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. In spite of legal threats from the litigious pair, World War I accelerated aircraft development and production.
A prolific aircraft designer was Glenn Curtiss, who was not dissuaded by his multi-year legal battle with the Wrights. His company mass produced 6,070 Curtiss “Jenny” trainers (“Canuck” was a Canadian variant). The slow-flying Jenny was a favourite of wing-walkers, and the plentiful and affordable biplane became the iconic favourite of 1920s barnstormers. Post-war, these surplus “crates” (many literally still in crates) were available for as little as 50 bucks.
The Curtiss JN 4 – “The Jenny” (2:27) [20]
Other military trainers, like the Standard biplane with its more powerful engine, were also used, but it had a “bitchy reputation” and tended to catch fire. [21] Another aircraft, the Thomas-Morse Scout, was:
a terrifying abortion of mechanical and aeronautical incompetence. It was a single-seater with a rotary engine (in which the entire engine rotated at great speed and with brutal torque) which once had been the great white hope of the U.S. Air Service. […] Fortunately for the nation, the “Tommy Morses” never reached France, thus robbing the Germans of easy victories and saving the Gold Star Mothers of America from an unnecessarily long list of members. [22]
Before long, there were between 500 and 600 young American pilots on the barnstorming circuit. [23] Barnstormers—small teams or in organized outfits called flying circuses—performed anywhere they could find an audience. With no proper airfields, pilots took risks with every flight, whether stunting or not. A green field was a dangerous, wet landing choice, maybe hiding stumps or ditches. Cows, who ate facing upwind, were reliable meteorologists: “there’s no better natural wind sock than the tail end of a cow; the stronger the wind the more likely you were to see all those cow-rump wind indicators.” [24]
The Barnstormer Aviators (1:45) [25]
Although many barnstormers worked on their own, or in very small teams, there were several that put together large “flying circuses” with several planes and stunt people. These types of acts had their own promoters who would book the show into a town ahead of time. They were the largest and most organized of all of the barnstorming acts. The Ivan Gates Flying Circus was perhaps the most traveled of all of the major barnstorming acts. […] Gates and his colleagues were famous not only for their stunts but also for having started the one-dollar-joy ride. This ride was so popular that in a single day, Bill Brooks, one of Gates’ pilots, took 980 passengers up for rides during a show in Steubenville, Ohio. [26]
Larger, organized shows were promoted in newspaper ads. Big air shows attracted up to 50,000 spectators. A small outfit might just buzz the town, pulling a banner and/or dropping ads, and performing a few sample tricks to attract attention. Captain Basil Lee Rowe knew how to gauge interest in his barnstorming exhibitions:
To test a town for its interest in flying, I would buzz it a couple of times. If the people continued about their business, I did the same. But if the animals and fowl took off for the woods and the kids tried to follow me, it indicated virgin territory. In that case I looked for a farmer’s field from which to operate and, when I found one, buzzed the town to get the whole population following me out to the field like the children of Hamelin following the Pied Piper. The farmer usually let me use his field for a free ride for himself and his family. [27]
The Minnesota Air Service Co. placed a confusing ad in the Bismarck Tribune in June, 1927. [28] A dodger in this case is a printed flyer. Six winners received free airplane rides.
A 1920 advertisement promising “daring air acrobatic feats” that risked a fall “hundreds of feet to instant death. Oh, it’s a thriller!” [29]
Rural fairs were an obvious venue, and guaranteed a crowd. Admission was typically 25 or 50 cents, and plane rides of 10 to 15 minutes might cost anywhere between one and 15 dollars.
Barnstormers, flying mostly Jenny biplanes left over from the scrapheap of 1918, hopped and struggled across the face of America from one pea patch to another, in the process caroming from cloud to cloud, dashing down valleys, and much too often barely evading mountains obscured within cloud and fog. They thrilled millions of people at large fields and isolated pastures with such acts as wing-walking without parachutes, snatching handkerchiefs from the tops of waving weeds, low-level aerobatics that included deliberately scraping wing tips in the dust or “slapping” the ground in wing-tip-to-wing-tip maneuvers, smoke-writing in the sky, spectacular delayed parachute jumps while trailing behind them a white plume of flour from XXX sacks. They jumped from one plane to another, engaged in mock dogfights, made wild takeoffs and landings, clowned around, and effected World War I flying togs. They stood patiently for pictures with local boys and femmes and, whenever they could do so, took up the locals for quick rides, for whatever ready cash it might bring. [30]
One such barnstormer was a young pilot named Charles Lindbergh who “crashed his way across the country on his first glorious trip with his own Jenny [… and eventually] started the biggest flying boom in history.” [31] His skills improved with practice. Lindbergh’s non-stop 33.5-hour flight from New York to Paris in May of 1927 made headlines around the world. Four million people lined the parade route in New York to celebrate his return. Aviation fever escalated.
Charles Lindbergh: A Young, American Hero (1:15) [32]
Lindbergh toured widely after his famous flight, visiting 82 American cities. Fargo declared August 26, 1927 Lindbergh Day. [33]
Fargo crowds were thrilled to welcome Lindbergh and his monoplane, Spirit of St. Louis. [34]
Tempting Fate
There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.
— Barnstormer’s adage [35]
“Death-defying” was not just advertising copy. The danger was very real, and the aerobatic teams were aware that “the crowd might be witness to what they secretly hoped to see—the blood of a man pulped out of his body as it smashed into the unyielding earth.” [36]
Danger was part of the attraction and thrill for gypsy flyers and audiences alike. The risks only grew as barnstorming companies tried to outdo each other and keep audiences enthralled. Operators introduced new stunts that were original, but often ridiculous.
Gladys Ingle changes wheel in mid air (2:19) [37]
A wing-wallker “trains” a fox on the wing of a Jenny. [38]
Anyone for tennis? Ivan Unger and Gladys Roy 3000 feet in the air over Los Angeles in 1925. [39]
“Two wing walkers sit at table on the wing of a Jenny airplane… ready to say ‘cheers!’ at a high altitude!” [40]
Fore! Film stunt pilot Al Wilson becomes the first aerial golfer, 1,800 (440m) in the air. [41] Sadly, he died in 1932 at age 36 at a show in Cleveland when his 1910 biplane collided with another plane when landing. Film cameras captured the crash. [42]
The worn-out wood and canvas airplanes themselves added to the danger. They were rickety and risky.
The danger in performing aerobatics before large crowds increased in proportion to the age and poor maintenance of the airplanes. What could rumble safely from one town to another in the air simply couldn’t withstand the punishing loads and forces of maneuvers. And so the planes began to fall apart in the air, and sometimes the pieces fell into the grandstands directly into the crowds. [43]
Lincoln Beachey was an early barnstormer whose many firsts earned him the moniker Alexander, the Great of the Air. The 28-year-old ran out of luck on March 14, 1915 when the wings of his plane folded and broke off during a steep dive over San Francisco Bay. He drowned in front of a crowd of 250,000.
Famed movie stunt pilot Ormer Locklear hit this breakaway steeple for the 1920 film The Skywayman as planned. It was all in a day’s work. [44] (When Mickey Mouse duplicated the feat in the 1928 Plane Crazy cartoon, the steeple accordioned down to let him pass.)
Omer Locklear earned big bucks in Hollywood, but it wasn’t worth dying at age 28. Blinded by movie searchlights that were not turned off as expected, he flew into the ground. The fatal footage remained in the film.
Petite Gloria Lynch, an expert pilot at age 24, paid the price in 1949 when her biplane was tossed in an updraft and slammed into the ground. Rescuers ran to the crumpled wreckage. “She was a lot shorter now. Both feet had been torn off at the ankles.” [45]
Louis “Speedy” Babbs was another parachutist, wing-walker and rope ladder aerialist. He claimed to have broken only fifty-six bones, a few at a time, and felt indestructible. He survived a parachute jump that went wrong with two crushed vertebrae that left him paralyzed for weeks. When healed, he went back for more, becoming a famous motorcycle stunt rider. One of the few old and bold pilots, he died in 1976 at age 70. [46]
Duke Krantz of the Gates Flying Circus had his career and life cut short. Hanging from a rope ladder below a plane was routine—until it wasn’t.
It swung back and forth with its human cargo transformed suddenly into a pendulum. That wasn’t too bad, except that the rope was too long. On one forward swing the stunt man went far into the propeller. He fell to earth in little pieces amid a fine crimson spray from the dismembered chunks of his body. But—that was the game. [47]
Surviving a crash itself didn’t pre-empt dumb luck. Wing walker and parachutist Wesley May died after landing in a tree in a cemetery. He then fell from the branches, fatally fracturing his skull on a gravestone. [48]
Dick Grace, a movie stunt pilot whose specialty was crashing planes, “sustained a serious neck injury when he fell out of the cockpit during the filming of Wings. But he made a full recovery and was one of the few stunt pilots of his day who died of natural causes.” He survived 50 crashes and 80 broken bones, including a broken neck. [49] After flying more than 45 combat missions and over 40 death-defying stunts, Grace lived to the ripe old age of 67, dying of emphysema on June 25, 1965.
Magazine advertisement for the Gates Flying Circus, October 5, 1925. [50] The company was the most famous barnstorming group in North America, and employed several famous stunt pilots and wing-walkers.
Even the best pilots and aerialists took great risks to entertain their crowds, however. A roster from the Gates Flying Circus recorded that 16 of their 28 pilots died in plane crashes, and half of their 20 stuntmen died (five parachute fatalities, two killed wing-walking, and three in plane crashes). [51]
Old planes, tired crews, poor maintenance, riskier stunts… the occupation grew more precarious over time.
In the year 1923 alone, reported the authoritative Aircraft Year Book, gypsy fliers were responsible for 179 serious plane accidents in which 85 people died bloody deaths and another 162 were injured. Listed as “probable causes” were such chilling reasons as stunting at low altitude; plane taken up with only a pint of gas; bad landing on bad field; plane plowed into crowd; stunt flyer failed to come out of barrel roll and tailspin and control stick broke. By the following year, barnstormers were held accountable for two out of three fatal crashes. [52]
The danger could not be denied, and newspaper editors took note.
This United Press newspaper article of 1930 told of several recent airplane deaths in graphic detail. One pilot was almost lynched after his plane dropped into the crowd, killing six and injuring 16. He was held in jail on a murder charge. [53]
A growing death toll garnered bad press and alarmed everyone. By the 1930s 18 of the top 23 aerial stuntmen in Hollywood had been killed, and four were grounded by major accidents. [54]
The situation prompted government intervention. With the field of aviation growing unchecked, general regulations and standards were needed anyway. The government stopped selling Jenny biplanes and passed the Air Safety Act in 1926, intended to improve and maintain safety standards. The Act banned many stunts, especially at low altitudes, and required the licensing of pilots and aircraft.
The Depression only added to the decline. Many barnstormers who could not meet the new standards found commercial flying jobs, delivering freight, passengers and mail instead of thrills.
The decline of barnstorming didn’t eliminate needless aviation risks, however. Air races and efforts to break new aviation records of all sorts created new perils and deaths. (The infamous 1927 Dole Air Race from California to Hawaii was disastrous, resulting in 10 deaths. Six planes were lost or damaged beyond repair, and only two of the 18 starting aircraft finished the race.) In July of 1937 Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific Ocean trying to become the first female pilot to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean. It was not the fame she wanted.
And so, it was against this backdrop that the intrepid Pete Fraser took to the air in Sarles on Saturday, August 13, 1927.
Pete’s adventure garnered a mere one-line mention in the Pilot Mound Sentinel. The same issue had noted, “Ford has just taken his first airplane flight.” [55]
It’s disappointing that editor Tuckwell, who had once devoted four paragraphs to a weird potato of Pete’s, did not find space to elaborate on the thrilling plane ride.
The Crystal City Courier was not overly enthusiastic either. [56]
It would be inspirational to conclude that eight-year-old Murray Fraser was so enthralled by the airplane rides in Sarles that he vowed to one day join the air force. Nope. Registering for mandatory basic training, he expressed no preference for any particular branch of military service. On his RCAF attestation papers, he did dutifully record a 15-minute airplane ride, but never expressed a desire to fly. Colour-blind and grounded, he was content to train as an airframe mechanic and keep his feet on terra firma.
Sources
“Hauling Wheat Across Border,” Winnipeg Free Press, November 15, 1911, p. 11
“Sunshine Highway is Very Popular With Tourists Now,” BrandonDaily Sun, September 25, 1923, p. 8
Sarles, ND Facebook site
Prairie Public TV, “Rivers, Roads, Rails, and Air: North Dakota’s Transportation Story,” 1996 YouTube video (Fargo, and Bismarck, ND: Prairie Public TV), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGlnvBpekDs
“DANCE” advertisement, Pilot MoundSentinel, November 22, 1923, p. 4
“Pilot Mound Fair” advertisement, Pilot MoundSentinel, June 12, 1924, p. 3
Local news column, Pilot MoundSentinel, July 23, 1925, p. 3
“Canadian Day at Cavalier County Fair,” Pilot MoundSentinel, January 29, 1925, p. 1
“July Fourth” advertisement, Pilot MoundSentinel, June 25, 1925, p. 1
“Cavalier County Fair” advertisement, Pilot MoundSentinel, July 1, 1926, p. 2
John T. Correll, “Romance of the Air: Barnstormers, wing walkers, and air racers lit the spark to enchantment with aviation.”Air & Space Forcesmagazine (online), May 5, 2022. (Frank S. “Luke” Luqueer Photo Collection / San Diego Air and Space Museum),https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/romance-of-the-air/
