The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
10 September 1911
The county's flying age opened as a show: On 10 September 1911 the French aviator René Simon, touring America with the Moisant International Aviators exhibition company, flew a Blériot monoplane from a field near the southeast corner of Ironwood Drive and Dragoon Trail before a crowd The History Museum puts at 30,000. The History Museum's account calls it the first successful airplane flight in St. Joseph County, and the St. Joseph County Airport Authority's own history page calls it "the area's first recorded airplane flight." The machine had come the way exhibition airplanes came in 1911 — shipped by rail and assembled where it would fly. The ground Simon flew from sits in what is now Mishawaka, and this record prints that plainly: the first flight of the South Bend area was made off a field across the city line, twenty-two years before the city had an airport of its own, and everything in this section descends from an exhibition crowd standing in a borrowed field watching a Frenchman prove the machine would stay up.
Sources:
- The History Museum, South Bend — "René Simon" (historymuseumsb.org): the 10 September 1911 flight, the Blériot monoplane, the Ironwood and Dragoon Trail field, the crowd of 30,000, and the "first successful airplane flight in St. Joseph County" statement.
- St. Joseph County Airport Authority, "History" (flysbn.com/about-sbn/history) — "the area's first recorded airplane flight," 1911.