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Hangars containing unique aircraft and collections were open to airport visitors, a staple of First Sunday Open Houses but done with extra pride for the airport’s 85th anniversary celebration.
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Santa Paula Airport celebration
evokes the spirit of its 1930 opening
August 05, 2015
By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula News
On August 9 and 10 in 1930 thousands of people gathered at the Santa Paula Airport to celebrate its opening with a grand two-day air show.
Famed aviators filled the sky with their fabulous planes including the randy and raucous Pancho Barnes, socialite turned aviatrix, and Roscoe Turner, the PT Barnum of the air who always flew with his pet lion Gilmore, named for Turner’s sponsor the Gilmore Oil Company. There was a parachutist encased in a wild contraption who called himself the Flying Squirrel and other daredevils ranging from Jimmy Doolittle and Art Goebel to Hawley Bowlus...and there was Ralph Dickenson, an area rancher and aviator who spearheaded the airport effort, rapidly corralling 19 investors to make it all possible.
Virginia MacMurray Grainger and her husband Don Grainger were also in that 1930 crowd, just as they were at Sunday’s Santa Paula Airport celebration 85 years later.
Both had already taken their first airplane rides with Dickenson prior to the airport’s dedication weekend, experiences they would never forget.
“I was five or six the first time,” said Virginia of her first airplane ride taken in 1928 or 1929, an “exciting” experience to recall at Sunday’s celebration.
Don went up a few years after Virginia, actually very close to the airport’s dedication when he was rewarded for helping to clear the field with an airplane ride with Ralph. Don was 8 years old.
The experience, he recalled, “was thrilling,” and Don said he was also thrilled to be attending the 85th anniversary celebration with Virginia.
“You know,” Don added, “I think we’re the only people here that were at the original dedication...”
Although neither Don nor Virginia ever got pilot licenses, they still fly.
Virginia noted the couple flew in May when she and Don were taken up by Bruce Dickenson, Ralph’s grandson, in his plane “Mr. Dickenson” named in honor of his aviation pioneer grandfather.
There were many with ties to the airport at Sunday’s celebration.
Airport historian Janice Dickenson, who is married to Bruce, said she was pleased by not only the large crowd but also some familiar faces not seen in a while.
“It’s been great!” said Janice. “We’ve got wonderful music by Molly Ryan, nice visitors including people we haven’t seen in awhile who moved away but came back for this...”
There was plenty of “this” including exhibits detailing the creation and opening of the airport and its famous pilots, vintage and experimental aircraft, hangars opened to show unique collections — many included in the Aviation Museum of Santa Paula’s famed Chain of Hangars — and a display of clothing worn by military personnel both male and female. Storyboards addressed aviation in general and locals in particular including the famed 99s, the women pilots’ organization co-founded by Amelia Earhart; the Ventura County chapter was founded at Santa Paula Airport and many of its female aviators have served as its president.
The 1930 opening date for the airport occurred during a particularly visual time in American history and aviators were particularly recognizable as demonstrated by several reenactors including Scotty Cramolini.
“This is what those famous pilots at the airport’s opening would have worn,” said Scotty, showing off his boots, jodhpurs, leather jacket and aviator helmet with ear flaps to keep out the cold for those flying open cockpit planes.
Scotty has participated in “living history” for five years and said although not a pilot himself his favorite aviator is “Charles Lindbergh of course!”
He even sported a circa 1928 button reading “King of the Sky” lauding “Lucky Lindy” as Lindbergh was nicknamed by an adoring world.
The nearby Ford Model A looking showroom new was “two weeks old when the airport opened,” said Scotty, and the vehicle is now owned by Richard Abbey.
Peter Mortensen of Taft owns a RV4 that took him 24 years to build but he said he opted to drive to Santa Paula for the celebration.
“I used to fly my Cessna 150 here,” to get flight reviews and Peter said there is some advanced training he’s thinking of taking at the Santa Paula Airport, renown for its aviation experts.
The crowd at Sunday’s celebration didn’t surprise hangar owner Craig Mailloux showing off his plane and hangar while he sat outside in the shade.
“Santa Paula Airport is unique,” and its regular First Sunday Open House is popular because “people can actually get up close and personal with the airplanes and even get inside hangars…”
And that includes Mailloux’s own: “You have a great hangar,” a visitor told him after a tour that included seeing decades of Mailloux’s award-winning newspaper photography and collection of press passes.
International Jazz and Big Band singer Molly Ryan flew out from New York to appear at the celebration but it was a return trip: last year she had used the airport as the backdrop for the album cover for her latest release, “Let’s Fly Away!”
“We love it,” she noted, “it’s a gorgeous day with the breeze,” and the appreciative crowd enjoying the tunes, some that could have been played at the airport’s grand opening.
“Eighty-five years for heaven’s sake,” a legacy that Beverly Kelley of Port Hueneme said was a reflection of Santa Paula’s uniqueness,
Jon Sharkey, a Port Hueneme councilman, pilot who has flown into Santa Paula and Kelley’s husband, agreed: “This is a fantastic, local airport...its like slipping back in time. With the incredible aircraft it’s living history!”
It was a tragic page from Santa Paula’s history that led to the creation of the airport when March 12, 1928 the St. Francis Dam located more than 50 miles to the east collapsed just before midnight. By the time the waters reached Santa Paula it was a semi-solid mass of buildings, vehicles, top soil, trees and bodies that destroyed everything in its path.
The flood swept through Ralph Dickenson’s ranch catching the hangar where he stored his biplane and sweeping them both away...but they were found intact a half-mile downstream.
With the land swept away Dickenson — an enthusiastic aviator since Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight captured his imagination in 1927 — realized the strip of property just north of the Santa Clara River would be a perfect landing field.
He and fellow rancher and pilot Dan Emmett, who later became a state senator, agreed the town had enough aviation supporters for an airport and within weeks they raised the $19,000 needed from a like number of investors.
Now, 85 years later, the original airport has grown from eight hangars to nearly 180, and more than 300 planes consider Santa Paula home base.
Some of those pilots that have called Santa Paula their aviation home include Steve McQueen, Clete Roberts, Gene Hackman and Cliff Robertson with regular visitors including Harrison Ford and James Franco, among others.
But the airport has always remained affordable a reflection of Dickenson’s determination that everyone should have access to flight.
Santa Paula Airport said Vice Mayor Martin Hernandez, “Has great people, a great atmosphere and great history...what a treasure we have here!”
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Acclaimed songstress Molly Ryan entertained at the Santa Paula Airport celebration singing several songs popular at the time of the airport’s 1930 dedication.
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