MANAGEMENT IN AVIATION HISTORY BENCH MARKS
A Tri-Motor rests in
front of Scenic’s passenger terminal and hanger [Thornburg Family]
J. Parker Van Zandt off-loads equipment from his truck to a Scenic’s aircraft. The “Rainbow Tour” logo was painted on the company’s aircraft and across the front and back of the hangar (~1928) [Grand Canyon National Park Museum]
J. PARKER VAN ZANDT By Giacinta Bradley Koontz
automobile over crude dirt roads. Then as now, rim views are of endless shades of tan and purple rock formations, and the olive green Colorado River which snakes through it. The enormity of this carved-out hole in the ground was left to the imagination until the invention of the airplane. From above, both sides of the canyon can be seen at the same time, dropping dramatically from fl at land down miles of cliff s. Arizonans have nicknamed this natural wonder the Big Ditch. Following the 1927 cross-Atlantic fl ight of Charles Lindbergh, fl ying gained popularity with the general public. But, regularly scheduled passenger fl ights, particularly for sightseeing was not yet common. That year, J. Parker Van Zandt [1894-1990] was working for the Stout All Metal Airplane Company on Henry Ford’s airfi eld in Detroit when a routine assignment led to a major change in his personal life as well as the future of tourism at the Grand Canyon. Born in Illinois, Van Zandt was a natural mechanic who
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later graduated with a college degree in Engineering. During his WWI military service Van Zandt’s convoy encamped near a French air squadron where he was taken up in a fl imsy “cloth and wood” aircraft. “That short ride gave me a new objective,” Van Zandt later wrote in his
y 1920, Arizona’s Grand Canyon was one of the original sixteen U.S. National Parks. Early visitors made the trip to the south rim of the canyon on foot, horse, mule or wagon, and later, by
Memoirs, “All my eff orts from then on were directed to trading my truck for an airplane.” Throughout 1918 Van Zandt lived in Paris, and was later transferred to England where he worked on radio navigation methods for bombing missions in “lumbering Handley Page bombers.” Returning home after the Armistice, Van Zandt earned his pilot’s license at March Field near Riverside, California. By the spring of 1919 the Air Service assigned him to Mather Field, near Sacramento, California, fl ying air patrols to report forest fi res. Van Zandt was eventually assigned to McCook Field in Dayton, Ohio, where he worked on a team which designed a compass that ignored metallic interference. The compass’ inventors were awarded the Magellan Medal in 1921, and in 1927 Charles Lindbergh used it to navigate his Spirit of St. Louis.
FROM CAPITOL HILL TO RED BUTTE In 1926, Van Zandt was appointed the fi rst Civil Aviation Advisor based in Washington, D.C. with a plan to integrate and encourage a civil aviation training program to support the military. The plan was three-pronged: 1) Create Federal legislation to support civil aviation and avoid State regulations;
2) Create Federal navigational aids for aviators as it already did for coastal shipping;
3) Expand the bidding for U.S. air mail routes to civilian carriers
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