5Thursday, Jan. 27, 2011 COMMUNITY Smith County Pioneer

Cromwell Continued from Page 4

DIVIDE - Cromwell Dixon crossing the Continental Divide

work done and prepare dinner, and then hurry away with the dishes unwashed for fear I will be unable to get a seat in the grandstand. Once there, I sit and worry all afternoon what I will get for supper.'"
     In the Smith County Journal Oct. 5, 1911 page 5 an article ran pertaining to Dixon. "Dixon crossed the main range of the Rocky Mountains from Helena, Mont. Last Saturday flying a Curtiss biplane, he left aat 2 o'clock, and rising to an altitude of seven thousand feet, steered straight west to Blossburg, forty-five miles away.

CROMWELL DIXON
     Cromwell Dixon was born in San Francisco, California, June 8, 1892. His father died when he was only two year old. His mother had family in Ohio and brought the boy in Columbus where he grew up a natural inventor. By age ten he had built a small sailboat, a camera and a backyard roller coaster.
     As a boy, DIxon showed his inventing skills by building a roller coaster for the neighborhood kids. In 1903 he built his own motocycle. When he was 14, he was dubbe "the youngest aeronaut in the world" when he won first ;prize for dirigibles in the 1907 Intenational Balloon race in St. Louis, Missouri with his home-made, human-powered dirigible he called the "Skycycle." He flew eight miles and crossed the Mississippi River on the way. After this success, he issued stocks to finance a mechani=cal version of his dirigible. On his seventeenth birthday, he flew in a self-made dirigible balloon over Dayton, Ohio. He continued to show his airshops across the United States and Canada well into 1910. On Spetember 4, 1910, he hearly crashed into the sea with his motor-powered dirigible when the engine failed at a height of 500 feet duirng a flight at the Harvard aviation meet in Boston, Massachusetts. He eventually landed only 10 feet from the water's edge.
     In the summer of 1905, Cromwell was one of the thousands who came to the Ohio State Fairgrounds to witness Toledo balloonist Roy Knabenshue's exhibit his propeller-equipped aircraft, powered by a motorcycle engine, was far more controllable than pregvious free-flight balloons, that were at the mercy of the winds. He moved his body along the frame suspended below his airship to control the ascent and descent and at on e staate fair exhibition in 1902, Knabenshoe flew from the fairgrounds to the Ohio Capitol building, visited with the Governor and then returned to the fairgrounds.
     With his imagination aflame, young Cromwell went to the fair daily to watch the flying exhibition, admire the airship and pick Knabenshue's brain. By the spring of 1907, the yoyuth had created his own "sky cycle", following Knabenshue's advice and using bicycle pedals to drive the propeller, as opposed to engine power, which increased the risk of a hydrogen gas fire. The Dixon Sky

Cycle was thirty-two feet long, fifteen feet in diameter and the fourteen-year-old pilot's first public exhibit with the Sky Cycle was June 9, 1907 at South Columbus' Driving Park Race Track. The excited youth flew several times the first summer, including one flight of five miles that rose to an altitude that was claimed to be one mile. He was honored with a medal which proclaimed him the first and youngest airship inventor in Columbus.
     Cromwell Dixon exhibited his sky cycle in Ohio cities and towns like Lima, Mansfield, New Philadelphia, Zanesville and Wellston. And he regularly flew at North Columbus' Olentangy Amusement Park. In the late summer of 1911, after seasons of travel to exhibit the sky cycle and compete in air shows throughout the country, Cromwell became a licensed airplane pilot, training in a Glenn Curtiss aircraft. In the next three months, he barnstormed Curtiss Pushers in the Dakotas, Kansas, Montana and Washington State.
     In late September, he flew from Helena to Blossberg, Montana and back, becoming the first person to fly over the Rocky Mountains and winning a cash prize. Unfortunately, many barnstormers, being young, inexperienced pioneers in a new era, lost their lives to performing risky maneuvers to entertain audiences.

INTERNATIONAL
AERONAUTIC
TOURNAMENT, 1907
Roy Knabenshue's exhibit his propeller-equipped aircraft, powered by a motorcycle engine, was far more controllable than previous free-flight balloons, that were at the mercy of the winds. He moved his body along the frame suspended below his airship to control the ascent and descent and at on e state fair exhibition in 1902, Knabenshue flew from the fairgrounds to the Ohio Capitol building, visited with the Governor and then returned to the fairgrounds.
     With his imagination aflame, young Cromwell went to the fair daily to watch the flying exhibition, admire the airship and pick Knabenshue's brain. By the spring of 1907, the youth had created his own "sky cycle", following Knabenshue's advice and using bicycle pedals to drive the propeller, as opposed to engine power, which increased the risk of a hydrogen gas fire. The Dixon Sky Cycle was thirty-two feet long, fifteen feet in diameter and the fourteen-year-old pilot's first public exhibit with the Sky Cycle was June 9, 1907 at South Columbus' Driving Park Race Track. The excited youth flew several times the first summer, including one flight of five miles that rose to an altitude that was claimed to be one mile. He was honored with a medal which proclaimed him the first and youngest airship inventor in Columbus.
     Cromwell Dixon exhibited his sky cycle in Ohio cities and towns like Lima, Mansfield, New Philadelphia, Zanesville

and Wellston. And he regularly flew at North Columbus' Olentangy Amusement Park. In the late summer of 1911, after seasons of travel to exhibit the sky cycle and compete in air shows throughout the country, Cromwell became a licensed airplane pilot, training in a Glenn Curtiss aircraft. In the next three months, he barnstormed Curtiss Pushers in the Dakotas, Kansas, Montana and Washington State.
     In late September, he flew from Helena to Blossberg, Montana and back, becoming the first person to fly over the Rocky Mountains and winning a cash prize. Unfortunately, many barnstormers, being young, inexperienced pioneers ina new era, lost their lives to performing risky maneuvers to entertain audiences.

INTERNATIONAL
AERONAUTIC
TOURNAMENT, 1907
     In 1907, St. Louis was host to the James Gordon Bennett International Aeronautic Club Race, the "first ever held in the United States." The trophy, plus a cash prize of $2,500, had been donated in 1906 by James Gordon Bennett, publisher of the New York Herald Tribune, for an annual international long distance balloon race to be conducted by the International Aeronautical Federation.
     The Aero Club of St. Louis decided to broaden the program into an aeronautic tournament by adding two unique contests scheduled for the days after the start of the Gordon Bennett rade. In each even, @$,000 was to be awarded to the winner and $500 to the contestant who finished seconbd. The first contest ws for "Dirigible balloons or airships which are lighter than air, being made so by a bag or envelope containing a gas lighter than air." A three-quarter-mile triangular course was laid out from the Aero Club grounds in Forest Park northwest to a captifve balloon over the Amateur Athletic Association grounds, and then return to the starting point.
     Charles J. Strobel, who owned the airships flown by Lincoln Beachey and Jack Dallas,collected first and second prizes of $1,500 and $750 respectively. Thomas Scott Baldwin, who had finished a poor third, received $250. In addition, a special purse of $375 was given to Cromwell Dixon in appreciation for his excellent performance. Within four years, "the youngest aviator in the United States" would be killed when he crashed from a height of 100 feet at the International Fair Gournds in Spokane, Washington, on October 2, 1911.

LICENSED PILOT
     Even though he wasn't old enough, after his triumph with the "sky bicycle" Cromwell begged his mother to sign a contract with the Curtiss Exhibition Company of New York so that he could be an exhibition pilot. Reluctantly his mother agreed and on August 34, 1911 he was awarded his pilot's license.
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