ON THE EARLY morning of April 18, 1906, a low rumble grew throughout the Bay Area. With an epicenter just 2 miles off the coast of San Francisco, the resulting 7.8-magnitude earthquake lasted from forty-five to sixty seconds, killing approximately three thousand, destroying more than twenty-eight thousand buildings, and leaving 225,000 people suddenly homeless. The Great Quake of 1906 remains one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States. At the time, Park Van Tassel lived at 1212 Twenty-Third Avenue in East Oakland. He was in the process of securing a set of supplies from Chicago, including fresh silk for a balloon, but the quake ceased all his operations.1 The same was true for Baldwin, as his dirigible storage facility on Market Street was destroyed, along with all his dirigibles with the exception of the California Arrow II, which had very fortunately been shipped to Hammondsport, New York, just prior. Baldwin abandoned the Bay Area, moving to New York to continue his aerial experiments with Glenn Curtiss and others. Montgomery’s glider experiments were also curtailed; he instead focused on the rebuilding of Santa Clara College. In just one minute, technological innovation in the Bay Area came to a halt. Aviation was an afterthought.
But those who had made their careers in aerial exhibition still had to pursue their lines of income. In late 1906, Van Tassel embarked on the construction of a new “mammoth” hydrogen balloon, made of silk and to be used for captive ascensions for weddings, tourism, and photography up to a maximum altitude of 3,000 feet. Newspapers noted that the initial ascent of the balloon, scheduled for October 14, 1906, was to be filmed by the Miles brothers, who during 1906 had filmed activities in the Bay Area relative to the earthquake. Their film A Trip Down Market Street remains one of the most important series of images of pre- and post-quake San Francisco. 169
Park continued to search for income. In early 1907, managers of the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City made arrangements with Van Tassel for the showing of his large captive balloon with a 1,000-foot cable. Van Tassel’s display would last from May 30 to September 15, 1907.2 A special gas house was constructed for these ascensions at the “old baseball ground” at the Salt Palace, so that hydrogen gas could be fed directly to the balloon.3 Papers in Salt Lake City billed Van Tassel as a local hero for his 1883 ascensions, as well as being the “first of many to make a success of taking photographs from a balloon.”4 Upon his arrival in May 1907, newspapers reported, “Since leaving here 24 years ago Prof. Van Tassell has grown from a young to an old man, while the number of his ascensions has increased from 19 to many hundreds. His balloon has hung above the palaces of almost every kind on the globe, and he has collected a large package of letters from princes, potentates, rajah mudas, poo-bahs, sultans, dattos, nabobs, mikados, and shahs.”5 His grand balloon consisted of 2,000 yards of silk made from 961 panels sewn together into a perfect sphere, at a total cost of roughly $3,000. A reporter noted,
When asked to tell of his experiences while ballooning around the world, Prof. Van Tassell produced a scrap book, on page one of which is a clipping from the Deseret News of July 5, 1883, giving an account of his first Utah appearance. After that in 1889 he took the first pictures ever snapped from a balloon, while his gas bag was floating over San Francisco. This trip was for the “Examiner” in the early days of Hearst’s career as a sensational editor. Editors in Kansas City, Portland, and many other cities have been his guests, and “star” reporters have written up many a city as it looked from the edge of his basket while his balloon hovered from 6,000 to 20,000 feet above it.6
But just as Van Tassel was making arrangements in Salt Lake City for his first captive balloon ascensions of the season, in the early morning of June 17, 1907, someone broke into the balloon house at the Salt Palace and cut eleven slits into the silk balloon, varying between 4 and 10 inches long. Acid of some type was dumped in six or so places, such that the slightest pull on the balloon would make the silk tear further. Van Tassel and his business partner E. D. Wenban claimed the vandals had caused roughly $6,000 in damages and ruined a year’s effort in planning. Prior to this, the balloon had been test-inflated at the Salt Works and a single small slit of 2 inches had been discovered. They were not sure it was vandalism at the time, but when eleven slits were added later, each carefully made along a seam in the most difficult place to patch, it was clear that the vandalism was made with specific ill intent. Upon this financial disaster, Van Tassel noted:
I shall not attempt to bring another balloon to Salt Lake, for it is evident that someone wishes to prevent my operating here . . . . While I could probably keep them from breaking into the balloon house and cutting another bag, any fellow who knows his business could stand 200 or 300 feet away from the balloon some afternoon while it was near the ground ready for a trip with passengers, and cut it by sailing a piece of glass swiftly against it. It is a trick that has been done hundreds of times and every balloon man knows that the best thing he can do when someone is trying to keep him from operating is to quit because there are twenty ways they can “get you.” The fellow that cut my balloon last night knew what he was doing, for he knew just how and where to cut the bag so that it would be hardest for me to repair it. If I was foolish enough to try to patch it up.7
Still eager to make a demonstration in Salt Lake City, Van Tassel sent word to Oakland for a new, smaller balloon to be sent to the Salt Palace for parachute jumps.8 The citizens of Salt Lake arranged for all the proceeds of Van Tassel’s parachute jumps to help cover his expenses from the lost balloon.9 However, there are no reports of successful parachute jumps by Park in Salt Lake City in 1907, and it is assumed he returned to Oakland, far poorer than when he left.
Interestingly, James Price had returned to the West after completing his ballooning tour of Asia, and while it is unknown if Price was in Salt Lake City at the same time as Van Tassel, it is clear that by August 1907 at San Jose, Price was building “the largest balloon in the world,” with a height of 94 feet, a circumference of 186 feet, and a carrying capacity of 1,200 pounds. Price envisioned entering the balloon in the Gordon Bennett Cup race in St. Louis, scheduled for October 1907.10 In September, Price made two ascensions at the Autumn Festival and Street Fair in Palo Alto.11 He developed a new system for aerial exhibition: two men and a cannon were carried aloft by balloon, with one man being “fired” from the cannon at 5,000 feet, to descend by parachute.12
With competitors at every turn, and now accepting the role of elder statesman, Van Tassel looked to simply enjoy ballooning with the company of others and to encourage others to learn the art of ballooning. While the public now appreciated that heavier-than-air flight was possible, the easiest way to enjoy flight was still via lighter-than-air balloons. And as more and more citizens became interested in taking to the air, it was appropriate that clubs and associations of like-minded individuals would soon form. For instance, the Aero Club of America formed in 1905 to help promote aviation in the United States. A state chapter, the Aero Club of California, formed in Los Angeles on May 26, 1908. Many of the clubs were interested in both lighter-than-air and heavier-than-air flight, with members mainly focused on balloons and gliders.13 In response to the formation of the Aero Club of California, the Pacific Aero Club and Oakland Aero Club formed in the Bay Area in 1909, with members including Park Van Tassel, Cleve T. Shaffer, and Geneve L. A. Shaffer. The Aero Club of America also began licensing aviators, with Glenn Curtiss receiving license no. 1 in the airplane division and Thomas Baldwin receiving license no. 9 in the balloon division and license no. 1 in the dirigible division.
In late 1908/early 1909, Van Tassel began working on the development of another large balloon. This one was 53 feet in diameter and could hold about 60,000 cubic feet of hydrogen, with a lifting capacity of 3,600 pounds. Twelve hundred yards of fabric were used in its construction. The balloon, christened Berkeley, was constructed by five people working for ninety days at the Globe Manufacturing Company at 720 Adeline Street in Oakland.14
According to newspapers, Van Tassel had not flown a balloon in Oakland since May 30, 1886, when he carried a bride and groom aloft at Badger Park in East Oakland, with the couple landing on the grounds of Mills College.15 On February 28, 1909, Van Tassel and C. C. Bradley, a teller from the local branch of Crocker National Bank, ascended in the Berkeley from the intersection of College and Alcatraz Avenues in Berkeley at 2:00 p.m. After an hour and a maximum altitude of 15,000 feet, they made a nice landing at a ranch 4 miles east of Sunol in Contra Costa County. The ascension was made through the auspices of the Pacific Aero Club.16
C. C. Bradley and Park Van Tassel with the balloon Berkeley, pictured in the San Francisco Call on March 1, 1909. Library of Congress.
On April 10, 1909, Van Tassel, Joseph M. Masten, and Knox Maddox departed Oakland in the Berkeley, once again landing near Sunol after a three-hour flight and narrowly missing a high-tension line on landing. Their maximum altitude was 7,000 feet.17 Maddox recalled,
We left Berkeley at 11 o’clock and after reaching an altitude of 1,000 feet encountered favorable inland breezes which carried us on the course we had planned to sail. Before I entered the basket the atmospheric conditions were promising and under the guidance of Captain Van Tassell we had no trouble in maneuvering. We were caught by a gentle wind as soon as we had risen and drifted over the fields without any difficulty. Twice we reached an altitude of 7,000 feet. The atmosphere was not cold, on the contrary, we frequently felt warm currents. We had planned to sail over the Santa Clara valley and land at [Mount] Hamilton, but the arrangements were altered. At 2 o’clock we landed four miles from Sunol and experienced no difficulty in descending. My purpose in accompanying Van Tassel was more for observation than for anything else. At all times the balloon was steady—just as steady as a floor. The trip was delightful.18
By June 1909, Van Tassel had purchased the famous United States balloon from Dick Ferris of Los Angeles for an undisclosed amount of money.19 Ferris worked in the entertainment industry in Hollywood and had been instrumental in the formation of the Aero Club of California.20
The United States had been flown by Lieutenant Frank Lahm (pilot) and Major Henry B. Hersey (copilot)21 to a first-place finish at the international Gordon Bennett Cup (Coupe Aéronautique Gordon Bennett), held at Paris, France, in 1906.22 Spectators had gathered in the famed Tuilieres Gardens in Paris to witness history’s first sponsored air race—a long-distance gas balloon race. James Gordon Bennett Jr., an American newspaper tycoon living in France, sponsored the race, which still bears his name. Lahm and Hersey covered an amazing 402 miles in twenty-two hours and fifteen minutes, crossing the English Channel to land at Fylingdales on the Yorkshire coast. The home country of the winning team was afforded the honor of hosting the next race, which meant that the 1907 Gordon Bennett Cup would be held in the United States, with St. Louis as the chosen location. The United States was used once again by Hersey and Arthur Atherholt in the 1907 race.23 However, at that contest they placed eighth out of nine contestants. Van Tassel agreed to make a balloon exhibition of the United States at Oroville, California, for Independence Day celebrations in 1909. However, on the afternoon of July 4, as the balloon was being filled, it broke free of the netting helping hold it to the ground and sailed aloft, going straight up until it disappeared from sight.24 The United States was recovered eventually, with Van Tassel disposing of the balloon entirely.25 He already had his sights on a new project.