Trans-Sierran Pioneer Flight

On March 22, 1919, four aircraft from Mather Field near Sacramento crossed the Sierra Nevada and landed east of Carson City—the first airplanes ever to fly over the mountains into Nevada. Three DeHaviland planes and a Curtiss trainer made the passage that emigrants had once dreaded on foot. Governor Emmet Boyle met the flyers and rode along on their return flight, becoming the first civilian to cross the Sierra by air. What had taken wagon trains weeks of struggle over the passes now took an afternoon, and the barrier that shaped Nevada's settlement was crossed in an hour.

What the plaque says

The first authenticated air flight over the Sierra Nevada was successfully completed when four U.S. Army planes touched down here on an improvised field. Originating at Mather Field, Sacramento, and led by Lt. Col. Henry L. Watson, the squadron was made up of three Liberty-powered Dehavillands and one 90 hp Curtiss Trainer. The fliers, personally welcomed by Governor Emmet D. Boyle, were Watson, Lts. Ruggles, Curtis, Krull, Schwartz, and Haggett, and Sgt. Conway. Haggett introduced an added surprise by landing his small trainer, unannounced, some minutes after the main flight. The flight concluded in Reno that afternoon. Governor Boyle flew as a passenger in one of the planes on its return flight to Sacramento, thus making him the first civilian ever to cross the Sierra in flight.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carson City — 1.1 mi
  The capital one man platted before there was a territory—where the Comstock's silver became coin at a U.S. Mint and a small sandstone city that has run Nevada ever since
• Stewart Indian School — 3.8 mi
  The federal boarding school that took Great Basin children from 1890 to 1980 to erase their cultures—its student-built stone campus now a tribally-guided museum telling the story in alumni voices
• The Flume Trail & Marlette Lake — 8.2 mi
  The other thing the Comstock took off Lake Tahoe—not its trees but its water, hauled over a mountain range through the highest-pressure pipeline on earth, on a flume grade that is now one of the country's great mountain-bike rides
• Sand Harbor — 9.9 mi
  The crown of Lake Tahoe's Nevada shore—car-sized granite boulders standing in water so clear the boats above them seem to float on air, on a beach the Washoe kept for thousands of summers

More markers nearby

• Corbett-Fitzsimmon Flight — 0.8 mi
• The Warm Springs Hotel and Nevada State Prison — 0.9 mi
• Charles W. Friend House, Observatory & Weather Station — 1.0 mi
• The United States Mint Carson City, Nevada — 1.0 mi