Neta Snook The Ames Iowa Aviatrix Who Taught Amelia Earhart To Fly

 

Neta Snook (Los Angeles Evening Post-Record. July 13, 1921)

In the summer of 1920, newspapers around northern Illinois told people there was something at the Carroll County Fair worth traveling miles to see.

 

Her name was Neta Snook, and she flew airplanes.

 

The fair had the usual attractions. Livestock. Grain exhibits. Horse racing and free entertainment. But the advertisements promised something most people still hadn’t seen up close: an airplane taking off, circling the fairgrounds and coming back down.

 

Better yet, a woman was going to fly it.

 

“AEROPLANE FLIGHTS EVERY DAY,” announced the Pearl City News. It called Snook the “GIRL BIRD” and said the Mount Carroll native was known across the country. She was “one of the most daring of aviators, and would be worth going miles to see.”

 

Another advertisement for the fair was simpler. Beneath the giant words “THE CARROLL COUNTY FAIR” were the words “Aeroplane Flights,” followed by Neta Snook’s name.

 

For four days, August 24 through 27, Snook would take an airplane into the sky over the fairgrounds at Mount Carroll, Illinois. Airplanes were still strange enough to stop traffic and draw a crowd.

The Davenport Aviation School An Early Chapter In iowa Aviation

 

(Davenport Democrat and leader. July 2, 1917)

The Davenport Aviation School opened with a war plane, a crowd, and big plans on July 4, 1917.

 

Nine weeks later, its manager was dead, its test pilot was lying badly injured in a Davenport hospital, and the school was finished.

 

By the end of September, workers were hauling the company’s airplane-building machinery out of Davenport and moving it to Bettendorf. Not long after that, the business disappeared.

 

It had come apart almost as quickly as it had come together.

 

But for a short time in 1917, Davenport wasn’t just trying to teach people how to fly. A group of local businessmen, mechanics, and aviators thought they could build airplanes there. They opened a factory, hired draftsmen and aircraft workers, designed their own machines, and flew them over the city.

 

They even talked about military airplanes as the United States was entering World War I.

 

The best known of those machines was King Boreas.

 

It was built in Davenport and advertised as a 90-mile-an-hour “Army Tractor.” Newspapers called it a war plane. The company said more airplanes were already under construction.

Curtiss Flyer Exhibited At The Des Moines Corn Exposition

 

Glenn Curtiss in his flying machine (Des Moines Register. December 3, 1909)

Des Moines was about to get a look at something most Iowans had never seen up close: a real flying machine.

Glenn H. Curtiss, one of the biggest names in the new and slightly crazy world of aviation, was sending one of his aeroplanes to the Corn Exposition. The machine was expected to arrive by express and would be assembled inside the Coliseum.

And this wasn't just any airplane.

Curtiss had recently become an international celebrity after competing against some of Europe's best aviators at Rheims, France. He won the Gordon Bennett aviation trophy there, beating Frenchman Louis Blériot in a 20-kilometer race by only a few seconds.

The Des Moines exhibition was handled by A. P. Warner of Beloit, Wisconsin, an aviator associated with Curtiss. Warner was expected to explain the machine, answer questions and show curious Iowans how this strange new invention actually worked.

There was even talk of flying it.

That part depended on the weather. Curtiss machines could fly in winds that would keep some other early aeroplanes on the ground, but December in Iowa wasn't exactly ideal flying weather. If conditions cooperated, organizers hoped to arrange a short outdoor flight.