Vernon Bookwalter began flying in 1919 with flight certificate No. 82 signed by Orville Wright.
Bookwalter piloted the first southbound air mail flight in the Northwest, leaving Pearson Field in Vancouver, Wash., at 5:25 a.m. on Sept. 15, 1926. His Travelair biplane carried 100 pounds of mail from Seattle and 84 pounds from Portland. He landed at 8:38 a.m. in Medford, the only air mail field in Oregon, exchanging the mail for 10 pouches that had been flown from San Francisco. He departed Medford at 9:20 a.m., arriving in Vancouver two hours later.
An enthusiastic crowd greeted Bookwalter’s first flight on the route, later described as “the simple, yet dramatic, beginning of a new era in rapid transit on the Pacific Coast.”
In 1927, Bookwalter entered the San Francisco to Spokane Air Race. Medford again was the landing spot in Oregon and Bookwalter was in the lead having flown this route hundreds of times for his air mail job. Leaving Medford he encountered fog, had motor problems and crashed. He survived and flew many more years.
References: Berryman, Marvin E. "Pacific Air Transport." The United Airlines Historical Foundation. United Airlines, n.d. Web. 26 July 2016. www.uahf.org/united_history_01.asp; Sinclair, Donna L. "Part III Riptide on the Columbia." Ft. Vancouver, National Historic Site. U.S. Park Service, Jan. 2005. Web. 28 July 2016
