August 23, 2022 Pioneers of the Landscape

The Liberty Gazette

August 23, 2022

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

A native of Kansas, a state which produced many of our earliest aviators, Royal Vearl Thomas was the second child born to Frank and Lillie Thomas. We don’t know much about his childhood, but we can imagine, as we reflect on stories of other children of the same era who witnessed the birth of aviation, that he might have similarly been that boy who looked up to the sky as a barnstormer flew low over a wheat field and ran as fast as his little legs could carry him to see an airplane up close and the lucky person who had just landed it. He probably got one of those penny-a-pound rides in a biplane, and if he did, surely he was hooked right away. 

We do know that R.V., as he was called, was a Lieutenant in the armed forces during World War I. We also know that he and Giuseppe Bellanca built a monoplane they named “Reliance,” and in it, he set an endurance record in 1927 for flying solo for 35 hours, 25 minutes, and 8 seconds, at Mitchel Field in New York. 

Meanwhile, two brothers from Pittsburgh moved to Arizona seeking adventure in tourism, photography, and film, which were also new industries. Ellsworth and Emery Kolb set up a studio at the Bright Angel Trailhead on the south rim of the Grand Canyon and sold their nature photographs in albums and tickets to view their 1911 movie of floating down the Colorado River from Colorado to Mexico, through the Grand Canyon. It was the first motion picture of its kind.

And how these to stories come together is that one day, Ellsworth Kolb offered R.V. Thomas one hundred dollars if he could land in the Grand Canyon and allow Ellsworth to ride along and film it. As soon as the stunt was approved by the park manager, R.V. took a burro ride down to find a landing spot.

This month marks the 100th anniversary since R.V. made a studied and calculated, but daring, landing on a five-hundred-foot strip of level grass he found inside the Grand Canyon. To this day, he is the only person to do that in an airplane. 

It's an amazing story that caught a lot of attention. In his own “Thomas Special” biplane, R.V. battled the unique and unpredictable swirling air currents and put on a show the park guests would never forget. He climbed up above the canyon, then put his airplane in a stall and spun down fast, pulling out of the stall-spin in time to land it. He stopped within fifty feet of an 1,800-foot drop. Getting it out of there would be another feat of great skill and luck. 

There’s a digital copy of the news story on the National Park Service website, which is well worth your time. The author’s description of the event, the pioneering characters, and the scene are superb, still breathtaking even one hundred years later. Highly recommended reading.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com