The first airplane flight in Alaska occurred at Fairbanks on July 3, 1913.
Pilot Army Captain J. V. Martin had given a talk to the Seattle Press Club in March of 1912. A Fairbanks businessman was impressed and asked him to come to Alaska to give a flying demonstration.
Martin and his wife Lily Irvin Martin, who was England’s first woman aviator, shipped their crated airplane from Seattle to Skagway by steamship.
Still crated, it was then shipped by rail to Whitehorse, and then was shipped down the Yukon River to Fairbanks by paddleboat.
Once it was in Fairbanks, the two aviators reassembled the Gage-Martin Tractor bi-plane and on the evening of July 3, 1913, Martin took off from Exposition Park, flying over the town at an altitude of 200 feet, and at a speed of about 45 miles per hour.
This was the first airplane flight in Alaska history.
The couple flew the plane four more times around Fairbanks over the next three days. They then tried to sell the plane, but with no buyers stepping up, they dismantled it and crated it back up, before shipping it back to San Francisco, their home.
