OVER THE COURSE of his life, Park Van Tassel witnessed an amazing transition in flight. Starting with little knowledge in the art of lighter-than-air flying machines and following his initial success at Albuquerque, he helped introduce ballooning to the West at a time when many had never witnessed lighter-than-air flight. As ballooning became more commonplace, he coinvented the first parachute in the West, his balloon used to drop Thomas Baldwin, and a generation of new exhibitionists jumped onto the method worldwide. One of Van Tassel’s many wives, the first woman in the West to make a parachute jump, also leaped from one of his balloons, and he continued to assist other women in both parachuting and ballooning. A photographer bankrolled by William Randolph Hearst took the first aerial photos in the West from one of Van Tassel’s balloons. Van Tassel was one of a generation of aerial exhibitionists to perform in the late nineteenth century, focusing on the English-speaking colonies of the British Empire, namely Australia and India.
However, during Van Tassel’s time away from the United States, aeronautics advanced at an increasing pace. By the time of his return at the start of the twentieth century, dirigibles and heavier-than-air flying machines were no longer science fiction. The public now considered balloon ascensions and parachute jumps to be more commonplace; women’s parachuting still somewhat daring. The public began to be captivated by concepts of powered heavier-than-air flight, and more and more citizens were eager to partake in aviation rather than pay to watch exhibitionists do the same. Citizens experimenting with their own balloons, dirigibles, gliders, and powered aeroplanes began to form clubs. Caught in this dynamic, the middle-aged Park Van Tassel focused on serving as an elder statesman of ballooning for the aero clubs in the San Francisco Bay Area. He dabbled with dirigibles but avoided a transition to heavier-than-air flying machines. Through the challenges of the Panic of 1893, World War I, and the Great Depression, and no longer on the cutting edge of aviation, he was lost from the spotlight. Having survived numerous near-death experiences during his lengthy career in aviation, he was quite fortunate to lead such a long and distinctly different life.
Some associated with Van Tassel continue to be remembered for their many efforts in aviation. For instance, the shrewd opportunist Thomas Baldwin is enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame for his contributions to ballooning, parachuting, dirigibles, and heavier-than-air flying machines. Often hailed as the sole “inventor of the flexible parachute”1 and after debuting the first dirigible for the US Army, Baldwin also became known as the “father of the American dirigible.” These accolades were partially earned for his bravery and abilities as a showman but also largely on the shoulders of others, such as Van Tassel, Greth, and Montgomery, whose relationships to Baldwin have been minimized or forgotten entirely. Baldwin served with honor in World War I, assisting the US Army with lighter-than-air craft. He passed away in 1923 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
John Montgomery is enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame as the first person in the United States to fly in a controlled fashion in a glider and also for his efforts to launch gliders from high-altitude balloons in 1905.2 However, Montgomery’s relationship with Van Tassel was short-lived. Other aviators, such as Augustus Greth, James Price, the Hawker (Viola) sisters, and the Freitas sisters, also remain rather forgotten.
This difference in fame was observable even shortly after Van Tassel’s passing. For instance, in 1935, when Congress debated early aeronautics and its application in patents, Roy Knabenshue, the pilot of the California Arrow at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, testified at the hearings. He stated to Congress:
The most beloved of the old timers was Capt. Thomas Scott Baldwin, who was always happy and who made a joke of everything and particularly his own profession. I received a great deal of training under Baldwin. He was known to millions as “Captain Tom,” and during the early days was probably the most widely known American airman in existence. He was genial, kindly, generous, and friendly, and undoubtedly the greatest showman of them all in his particular line . . . . He was engaged in walking a tight-rope from Seal Rocks to Cliff House at San Francisco, when he met Prof. Van Tassel, who was advertised to make a parachute drop from a balloon at one of the local amusement parks. Tom Baldwin made the first parachute jump in America out at San Francisco, in January 1885. Tom made an agreement with Van Tassel to make the drop for him, and this, as I say, was the first parachute drop in America, the first successful parachute descent.
Later in the proceedings, Knabenshue commented,
Tom Baldwin built the first successful American dirigible which was flown at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904 . . . . Another dear old soul was Prof. Park A. Van Tassel of Oakland, Calif. It was from his balloon that Captain Baldwin jumped from in San Francisco in 1885. Van Tassel at the same time as Baldwin made a world tour and returned to this country and his last stop was Honolulu. He had a young man travelling with him to make all the ascents and parachute jumps. On their last engagement at Honolulu, the young man came down in the bay in full view of the crowd and was devoured by sharks before help arrived. Of course, this put an end to Van Tassel’s experience.3
The readers of this book will realize that at the time of Lawrence’s tragedy at Honolulu, Van Tassel’s international journey and importance to aviation were far from over. Knabenshue’s lack of accurate and complete information was not unique. Those in Australia knew little of Van Tassel’s previous efforts in the West. Those in India knew only indirectly of Van Tassel’s association with James Price, there was confusion about the familial relationship of Gladys and Valerie Freitas to Park Van Tassel, and those in Australia were easily confused when yet another “daughter,” Jeanette Van Tassel, passed in Dacca. While some recognize Van Tassel as the first to fly in Sri Lanka, his history before and after those flights remains unknown to many, other than that Van Tassel had made balloon ascensions and parachute drops for some time in India. It is ironic that while Van Tassel’s efforts as an aerial exhibitionist often resulted in crowds of thousands of spectators at each stop, his typical frenetic pace from one city to the next left a ragged and incomplete trail for historians to appreciate. While we know Park Van Tassel kept a scrapbook of his adventures, and that scrapbook made it back with him from Asia to California in the early 1900s, it too has been lost to time, a key resource and diary of his experiences. Even the location of his unmarked grave in Oakland remained a mystery until the research that produced this book. It is hoped that with greater appreciation might come greater recognition for Van Tassel and the other daring aerial exhibitionists of his generation.
From the 1930s to the 1960s, aviation historians might have taken greater time to truly understand the relationship of Van Tassel and Baldwin.4 While some credit Baldwin with the sole invention of the flexible parachute, others co-credit Baldwin and Van Tassel. But very few acknowledge that the initial concept was Van Tassel’s, and even fewer focus on Baldwin’s co-option of the parachute from Van Tassel, the dirigible from Greth, and the propeller from Montgomery. Without the Internet to make such disparate resources easily available, piecing together such a journey would have surely been difficult for previous historians. It certainly did not help that Van Tassel’s last name was spelled many ways in the literature, including “Van Tassell,” “Vantassel,” “Vantassell,” “Van Tassol,” and even “Mantasso.”
It is hoped that this book helps set the record straight. From his first flight in Albuquerque to his last flights in Oakland, Van Tassel had one of the more amazing life journeys in early American aviation. He would certainly be proud of the accomplishments of parachute jumpers Colonel Joseph William Kittinger II, Felix Baumgartner, Alan Eustace, and others who have jumped from balloons at amazing heights above 100,000 feet to parachute back to Earth safely. For instance, on August 16, 1960, just thirty years after Van Tassel’s passing, Kittinger jumped from a balloon at a height of 102,800 feet over Roswell, New Mexico, as a part of the US Air Force’s Project Excelsior. At the time, his flight set world records for the highest piloted balloon flight, highest parachute jump, longest free fall, longest drogue fall, and highest speed of a human in the atmosphere, 614 miles per hour. His feats were in part eclipsed more recently by Felix Baumgartner, who jumped by parachute from a balloon on October 14, 2012, from a height of 127,852 feet as part of the Red Bull Stratos project in New Mexico. His speed of 843.6 miles per hour roughly 170 miles south of Albuquerque made Baumgartner the first human to exceed the speed of sound during free fall.5 Alan Eustace exceeded Baumgartner’s height mark by jumping from a helium balloon at an amazing altitude of 135,889 feet, establishing a new world record for the longest free fall: 123,414 feet.6 However, Eustace’s jump involved a drogue parachute and thus was slower and in a different category than Baumgartner’s speed record. These amazing accomplishments take the efforts of Van Tassel and Baldwin to the extreme and would have been considered absolutely impossible at the time they were quietly testing their flexible parachute design in private at the Mechanics’ Pavilion in San Francisco.
Van Tassel would have been most proud that Albuquerque is now home to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta®, a celebration of beauty and camaraderie of lighter-than-air flight, established by Albuquerque’s own Sidney Cutter and many others associated with the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, Inc., which he helped establish. Their efforts are the true reason that Albuquerque has become known as the Balloon Capital of the World. Similarly, three Albuquerque aviators, Benjamin Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman, pushed the limits of ballooning with their flight in the Double Eagle II from Presque Isle, Maine, to Miserey, France, near Paris, landing on August 11, 1978. It was the first successful transatlantic crossing via gas balloon, a distance of 3,120 miles covered in 137 hours and six minutes. Not long after this success, Abruzzo, Newman, Hiroaki “Rocky” Aoki of Japan, and Ron Clark of Albuquerque became the first to complete a transpacific crossing in their helium-filled Double Eagle V with a flight from Nagashima, Japan, to Covelo, California, a distance of 5,768 miles in eighty-four hours and thirty-one minutes. More recently, on January 31, 2015, Troy Bradley of Albuquerque and Leonid Tiukhtyaev of Russia flew their 350,000-cubic-foot Two Eagles helium balloon from Japan to Mexico, setting new world records for both distance (6,646 miles) and duration (160 hours and thirty-eight minutes), besting the long-standing Double Eagle V record. In true Van Tassel fashion, their landing was in the water off the coast of Baja California.
On March 5, 2005, New Mexico governor William Blane “Bill” Richardson III signed into law Senate Bill 13, sponsored by New Mexico state senator Steve Komadina, a member of the ballooning community in Albuquerque. Among other things, the bill certified the yucca as the official state flower, the roadrunner as the state bird, and the hot air balloon as the official state aircraft. In 2013 New Mexico state representative Tim D. Lewis introduced House Bill 625 for the creation of a set of Heritage Registration automobile license plates. One of the proposed plates was to honor all New Mexico aeronauts, including Park Van Tassel and his first flight in 1882. Unfortunately, the bill stalled in committee, and the license plates were never approved. We should be proud to remember that Albuquerque and New Mexico’s association with balloons started on July 4, 1882, with a young and courageous man named Park Van Tassel. His lifetime association with ballooning and parachuting led to many amazing adventures, including landing in swamps, mudflats, trees, and seas. But despite these difficulties, he persevered, introducing flight to many thousands across the western United States and around the world through daring aerial exhibitions.