Charles R. Mitchell - Flying High: Pioneer Women in American Aviation

By the time Blanche Stuart Scott was 13 years old, society could see that she had a cheerful disregard for convention. She had already established her reputation in Rochester, New York, as a trick rider on the newfangled bicycle. Now she was tooling around town in her fathers one-cylinder Cadillac, and city fathers combed their books for a regulation that would stop her. Glumly, they concluded they had none. Scott was sent away to finishing school, but she never got finished. With the death of her doctor father, times became tighter for the family, and she had to make her own way in the world. She mapped out a course through life to boldly go where no woman had gone before.

Blanche Scott said she was 18 (but was probably at least 23) in 1910, when she convinced Willys-Overland to book her for a cross-continental road trip. Going overland in an Overland, she would be, by most accounts, the first woman to drive coast to coast. The voluminous covering gear was not a concession to modesty. She needed it because there were only 250 miles of paved road in the United States back then.

The Car, the Girl, and the Wide Wide World. What slogan could better capture that exuberant first decade of the new American century? Reporter Gertrude Lyman Phillips (and a support car) also made the trip, but Scott did all the driving herself.

Scott also had to handle her own maintenance. We believe in womens work here, said Elbert Hubbard of the Roycroft group in East Aurora, New York. You are teaching the American girl courage and independence, that she may accomplish what her brothers can do. Part of the point of the trip, of course, was that even a young girl could accomplish it.

Blanche Scott made it, too. Phillipss book Wonderful Performance of a Wonderful Car: The Story of Miss Scotts Journey Overland made Scott a well-known figure. Of course, the distance between New York and San Francisco is considerably less than 5,000 miles, but they did make numerous detours to appear at Overland dealerships.

After the trip, Scott struck a deal with Jerome Fanciulli, manager of the Curtiss Exhibition Company, to join the airshow circuit. Fanciulli sent her to Hammondsport, New York, and a reluctant Glenn Curtiss, who feared that a woman being injured could ruin the airplane business. The inscription, signed Betty (her nickname), reads, I dont feel as ugly as I look.

Glenn Curtiss agreed to give Blanche Scott lessons, starting, as all pilots did, with grass cuttingrumbling up and down the field with an underpowered aircraft. Glenn and Lena Curtiss put her up in their home, lending her a Curtiss motorcycle to get around the village. She was so short that she had to dismount by cutting the engine, coasting up next to a wall or tree, and vaulting off as she slowed to a halt.

One day, Scott accidentally took off and landed safely, after which Curtiss tossed in the towel. Most students of aviation consider Scott the first woman pilot in the Americas, although Bessica Raiche flew on Long Island at just about the same time, leaving the matter in dispute. Scott knew that Madame de la Roche had preceded them in Europe. I never forgave her for that, she often said. (Courtesy U.S. Postal Service.)

Blanche Scotts machine was an early-model Curtiss pusher, such as this one she is sitting in on the field in Hammondsport. She went to Chicago with the exhibition team in October and hoped to make her debut there. However, the Curtisses jointly vetoed her flight, feeling she was too inexperienced for the wind conditions.

Scott flew her first exhibition at Fort Wayne in November and soon billed herself as the Tomboy of the Air.

Scott became well known for her death dive from 4,000 feet to 200 feet. We were all kooks, she later recalled, and I was probably one of the biggest. After this postcard was issued, Lincoln Beachey was also killed in an exhibition. We risked our necks every day, she recalled, but the crowds didnt care if you got killed or not, because there was always someone else to follow you and take your place.