WHAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN

IF YOU'VE FLOWN INTO OR OUT OF ARIZONA, you know the view from the airplane window. The one where rugged lines and curves outline one of the world's greatest natural wonders, a reminder of millions of years of Mother Nature working her artistry in ways that could never be planned. For most travelers, the aerial view of the Grand Canyon is a telltale sign that they've arrived in Arizona. For Stephen Schmidt, it's a reminder of his family's role in shaping history.

Schmidt's uncle, Sergeant Arthur Juengling, was the “mechanician” — known today as co-pilot — on the first flight into the Canyon. That journey, in 1921, doesn't rate a mention in most history books, and Schmidt only knows about it because of old family photo albums. He inherited those after his mom died in 2006. When he dug a little deeper into his family's past, he learned the role his uncle played in Arizona aviation. He did so, he says, partly because nobody else had: “My mom was the youngest of six, and she was actually born six months after [Juengling] died. She didn't know much about him, either.” But Juengling's pioneering flight has influenced nearly a century of air travel in and around the state.

ARTHUR JUENGLING grew up in Columbia, Illinois. Like many young men of his time, he served in the military, which gave him the opportunity to travel. He discovered the Southwest during his first U.S. Army posting in Arizona, which consisted of flying reconnaissance along the U.S.-Mexico border with his pilot, Lieutenant Alexander Pearson Jr.

Juengling and Pearson's next assignment took them to Northern Arizona, where they were tasked with something that had never been done: studying flight paths in and around the Grand Canyon. The Department of the Interior wanted to establish an airline passenger and mail service to the Canyon, and at the time, little was known about the surrounding area, which only recently had been designated a national park. Scientists assumed it was too dangerous to fly above the Canyon, due to weather patterns created by the gorge. A newspaper article recounts that "Lieutenant Pearson was showered with tales of the dangers of the Canyon with its temperamental clouds, storms and air currents until, as he expressed it, he was 'almost scared to death' of the job that had been assigned him."

Despite the expected danger, Pearson and Juengling accepted their assignment. They were instructed to study the air conditions and find possible landing areas between the Union Pacific Railroad in Utah and the Santa Fe Railway in Arizona. The pair took off from Nogales and headed for the Canyon on May 31, 1921, stopping along the way in Phoenix, Prescott, Ash Fork and Williams to determine the viability of landing fields in those communities.

The aviators drove from Williams to the Canyon on June 4, then drove around looking for suitable landing sites around the park. But the thick forest made the task difficult, and they didn't find any usable sites closer than 11 miles from the gorge, near what now is the ghost town of Anita. Pearson flew back to Nogales on June 6. On June 9, he returned to Williams, which ultimately was chosen as the base for the Grand Canyon survey. Although it was more than 50 miles away, it already had an air-field with fueling facilities.

Finally, on June 10, Pearson and Juengling made the inaugural flight. Flying a De Havilland DH-4 biplane, they took off from Williams and arrived at the Canyon in less than 30 minutes. Whether the pilots felt awe, wonder, fear or all of the above as they soared over the Canyon's buttes is uncertain, but we do know that they were in uncharted territory and had to depend on each other to make the right calls. It likely didn't help that the South Rim was lined with, as one newspaper article put it, "hundreds of witnesses ... speculating as to what part of the vast chasm below would receive the wreck of the daredevils' plane."

But Pearson and Juengling proved their doubters wrong. On that first flight, which lasted two hours and 40 minutes, Pearson noted the heat swells coming from the Canyon. The temperature difference between the rim and the bottom of the gorge can be more than 20 degrees, and that disparity causes turbulence when flying along the Canyon walls. Pearson's notes indicated the conditions were rough for flying within a quarter-mile or half-mile of the walls. Later, he said he wouldn't call flying into the Canyon "exactly a pleasant pas-time in windy or irregular weather."

Over several days, Pearson and Juengling completed their assignment, making 14 flights into and out of the Canyon, along with explorations of the San Francisco Peaks and other local landmarks. They descended 3,500 feet from the South Rim and 4,500 feet from the North Rim, and one of their more notable feats was landing and taking off on the North Rim, which has an elevation of more than 8,000 feet. In an interview with Prescott's Weekly Journal-Miner, Pearson said he was “sur-prised how easy it was to land and take off at 9,000 feet.” The pair's 22 hours of flight time produced key information for future flights over and around the Canyon walls. The only problem they reported was the plane's motor heating up due to the hot air at the bottom of the Canyon. And they disproved the claims about air travel over the gorge, advising people to “pay no attention at all of the talk we have heard about cross currents, air pockets, etc. making the air above it impossible to navigate.” Pearson reported that the Canyon could be crossed safely by plane “any time that flying is good in the country.” A new era of air travel was born. What once was considered impossible was now not only possible, but relatively easy. And Pearson and Juengling's mission paved the way for another historic aviation feat: The following year, stunt pilot R.V. Thomas made the first landing of an airplane within the Canyon, at Plateau Point, with legendary photographer Ellsworth Kolb as his passenger.

The results from the flights Pearson and Juengling conducted have been used to direct air traffic in the Grand Canyon area for decades. Pearson's recommendations included staging airfields at least 2 miles from the rim to avoid any tur-bulence from the Canyon's air currents. Those recommendations became the basis of the area's flight rules, and since then, the Canyon has been involved in other air travel developments, including the creation of the Federal Aviation Administration, which resulted from a deadly midair collision of two passenger planes over the Canyon in 1956. Today, the airspace over the Grand Canyon is a special flight rules area, which limits how low aircraft can fly over certain areas of the park.

THE LEGACY of Pearson and Juengling endures. However, the pilots themselves were less fortunate. Juengling died at age 21 in a plane crash in El Paso, Texas, just a year after the inaugural Canyon flight. Two years later, Pearson met the same fate. And while Pearson received many honors for the other work he did in the Army, Juengling's fame and heroism was limited to his small town in Illinois. “He was buried with full military honors,” Schmidt says. “There were 10,000 people at his procession. Even though this was a minor thing that occurred in our history, it was a big deal in his hometown.” It would be many years later, in 1969, when Schmidt would get his first aerial view of the Grand Canyon and see firsthand what his uncle pioneered nearly 50 years earlier. While flying over the area, Schmidt says, he felt a sense of pride: “It's the only honor I've had in my life. It's neat to know someone in your life accomplished that.” The rest of us can simply appreciate the task that two brave men took on nearly 100 years ago - and their part in giving us the ability to take in a spectacular view from a window seat. AH