1905-1920

Daytona Beach attracts early fliers

Hard packed sand provides daring aviators with a natural runway

Clockwise from above: (1) Planes and cars on the sand at Daytona Beach, 1920s. (2) Vintage Post Card, 1920s. (3) E. F. Andrews in a glider developed with Raymond Acre, March 1911. The glider was a replica of a 1905 design by pioneering California inventor John J. Montgomery. (4) January 1920 auto-airplane race between H. F. Alexander in his Duesenberg Special and Tex Marshall in his Nautilus Jenny. Marshall won by four miles. (5) Carl Bates in his 10 HP plane, ca. 1909. (6) Aviatrix Ruth Law and millionaire divorcee Mrs. Robert Goelet in Law’s Wright Model B, circa 1914.

Daytona adds aerial exhibitions to winter attractions

In the early 1900s, Florida cities vied for seasonal visitors. Jacksonville had its skyscrapers. New Smyrna its fishing. Tampa hosted fairs and Palm Beach boasted golf courses. Daytona Beach became famous for high-speed automobile racing, its hard-packed sand making it an ideal location for manufacturers to test the speed and performance of their vehicles. It followed quite naturally that only a scant three years after the Wright Brothers’ first powered flight at Kitty Hawk, aspiring aviators would turn to those same sandy beaches to test their experimental flying machines.

Trial and error mark early events

The first such recorded experiment was performed by Charles K. Hamilton in January 1906. Pulled by a 120 HP Fiat driven by his redoubtable chauffeur, Henry W. Fletcher, Hamilton ascended in his kite to 200 feet when it began to pitch and wobble, throwing him onto the boardwalk. According to one news report the aviator hurt a knee but was otherwise unharmed and walked cheerfully away from the scene, pledging to return.

Other Daytona kite flyers were not as lucky. In April 1906, Israel Ludlow’s kite collapsed, causing a crash that left the New York inventor seriously injured and with fears for his life. (A year and a half later, however, Ludlow was again competing, this time for a thousand-dollar cup on “Airplane Day,” at the Jamestown, VA, Exposition.)

By 1909, the promotors of Daytona’s Automobile Racing Carnival decided to include aerial exhibitions in the four-day event. When it was announced that the 1909 meet would feature the first air race in the world, including airplanes and dirigible balloons, Glenn Curtiss himself announced that he would attend to promote one of his machines. Also planning to compete in the 1909 Air Race was Carl Bates, a 20-year-old Chicagoan, who had built a plane said to be similar to that built by the Wright Brothers. Bates’ plane was not able to take off, however, and he left Daytona bitterly disappointed, saying he’d be back. The distinction of hosting the world’s first air race was left to another city (Reims, France, in August 1909) but aviators and their flying machines continued to seek out the sands of Daytona Beach with unabated enthusiasm.

“Florida’s first airport”

In late December 1911, the operators of the Clarendon Hotel in Seabreeze (today’s Daytona Beach) came to an agreement with the yacht designer turned airplane builder W. Starling Burgess to host daily flights from the beach in front of the hotel during the winter season. By February 1912, Burgess had built a new hangar next to the hotel for his Burgess-Wright airplane. According to Dick & Yvonne Punnett, authors of the wonderful book, Thrills, Chills & Spills, “If we define an airport as a takeoff and landing field with provisions for aircraft shelter and service, you are looking at Florida’s first airport!”

Ruth Law

Among the early aviators contracted by the Clarendon was Ruth Law, the first woman pilot to take to Florida skies. Her first Daytona flight took place on January 13, 1913. She quickly became a popular and well-known figure in the area and found many willing passengers as well as students for the pilot training classes she began to offer in December 1914.

Law spent three winter seasons in Daytona, from 1913-1916, until the outbreak of World War I, when she directed her efforts to supporting the war effort through exhibition flights benefiting the Red Cross and Liberty Loan drives.

Popularity endures

Daytona Beach continued to host aerial exhibitions and events of all kinds well into the late 1920s, though the building of airstrips further inland eventually meant that some activities were shifted offshore. It wasn’t until the 1930s that a city ordinance was passed which fully prohibited the beach from being used as an airstrip.

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