Published September 6, 2025
By Joseph Newkirk
On March 27, 1925, a small plane made an emergency landing on the Farlow Field near Camp Point. A 21-year-old pilot, who only a week earlier had been commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army Service Reserve Corps, needed a part for his Curtiss-Jenny, a single-engine biplane. He found an equipment dealer in the area: Abbott Electric Company located at 111 North 10th Street in Quincy. Ted Cantrell, a nearby resident, gave the pilot and his co-pilot, Randolph Enslow, an automobile ride from Camp Point to Quincy. The pilot’s name was Charles Lindbergh.
Lt. Lindbergh spent the night in Camp Point. By morning a crowd had gathered to gawk at his airplane. For most it was their first view of this invention, which revolutionized transportation. As he and other pilots did to earn money and spread awareness of flight, Lindbergh gave “barnstorming” rides that day to people wanting to see the world from hundreds of feet in the air.
Charles Lindbergh had loved aviation since childhood and pursued his dream of becoming a pilot by training at Brooks Field in San Antonio and receiving his wings. He then entered the Missouri National Guard and flew airmail routes to towns between St. Louis and Chicago. All the while, he continued studying plane design and aerodynamics.
In 1919, Ray Orteig, a wealthy French-American hotel owner, offered $25,000 ($464,000 in today’s currency) for the first solo non-stop flight from New York to Paris. During the Roaring ‘20s, many aviators tried to win this prize. Lindbergh himself set out to meet Orteig’s challenge, and after securing funds from several St. Louis businessmen began plans for a plane he believed could cross the ocean successfully.
Lindbergh opted for a monoplane for this 3,600-mile journey, and two Quincy natives played a vital role in constructing “The Spirit of St. Louis.” William B. Stout, a pioneering inventor and engineer, designed the monoplane’s cantilevered-wing. The innovation reduced the need for external bracing. Also, Lindbergh and almost all pilots carried parachutes for emergency evacuations. They were standard equipment. In his autobiography, We, Lindbergh praised Quincy balloonist and parachutist Thomas Baldwin’s invaluable contributions to aviation and called him “The father of modern parachute jumping.” On his attempt to cross the Atlantic, though, Lindbergh decided to fly without a parachute, radio and fuel gauge to reduce the plane’s weight.
On May 20, 1927, the 23-year-old aviator took off from Roosevelt Airfield in Garden City, NY, with open windows on his cockpit to allow wind and rain to keep him alert during his voyage. After a thirty-three-and-a-half-hour flight, undaunted by frequent strong turbulence, he landed at Paris’ Aeroport Le Bourget. There, a massive crowd carried him on their shoulders for 45 minutes. The unknown pilot who had barnstormed in Camp Point, obtained a needed part for one of his planes in Quincy, and later adopted a local engineer’s wing design that made his historic flight possible, instantly became the most famous person in the world.
Quincy joined in the global celebration. The Washington Theater showed pictures of Lindbergh’s flight to sold-out audiences. In an editorial on June 12, 1927, Quincy Herald-Whig editor, Charles F. Eichenauer, related a conversation he heard between two 11- or 12-year-old local youths inspired by their hero Charles Lindbergh. “There was rapid talk of wing spread, total weight, gallons of gas, fuselage, propellers, earth conduction, drift indicator, and air-cooled engines.” In his baccalaureate sermon to Quincy High School graduates that year, Rev. Harry L. Meyer pronounced: “You graduates may not achieve renown in doing the unique difficult brilliant thing that Charles Lindbergh did, but you can all find out what you were born for and what you can be and do in the world.”
The fields of aviation and aeronautics spread across the country, especially in places like Quincy, which had strong industrial and technical work forces. Neil Monroe built a temporary landing field in 1927 on what is now Cedar Crest Country Club. The next year, with flights occurring regularly, he constructed a paved landing field at 36th and Payson Road. In 1934 it became Quincy’s first airport. Commercial and airmail planes, and also experimental planes designed and built by Quincyans like Howard Ogle and Richard Meyer flew in and out of Monroe Airport.
As Lindbergh’s fame grew, distortions and fabrications about his flight increased. His first words were often quoted as “Well, I made it.” In his book, Lindbergh, acclaimed American biographer A. Scott Berg, who personally interviewed Lindbergh, stated that the pilot’s first words were. “Are there any mechanics here?” Quincy Co-Operative Milk Producers Association began running half-page ads in the June 19,1927, Quincy Herald Whig quoting his first words as “”I’d like to have a glass of milk and a bath. I would feel better.”
The age of air flight soon burgeoned with a new generation of aviators. Quincy’s Robert Howe, a 17-year-old Quincy High School junior, became the city’s youngest pilot. A year after Lindbergh’s flight, Howe made his first solo in a Waco biplane that had been rebuilt after crashing several weeks earlier and killing local residents Bill O’Neil and Ernest Onge. In an interview in the November 24, 1929, Quincy Herald Whig Howe stated “These deaths are part of the game…Colonel Charles Lindbergh never meant a thing to me. He’s just another aviator. I’ve been an enthusiastic aviation booster long before the ‘Lone Eagle’ entered the limelight.”
A local editorial asked, “When we travel through the air, what other elements still remain to be conquered?” Upon setting foot on the moon in July 1969, Neil Armstrong proclaimed his was “One small step for a man.” This astronaut’s words intimated previous steps taken by pilots like Charles Lindbergh and the important role Quincyans played in his historic flight and in the early fields of aviation and aeronautics.
Joseph Newkirk is a local writer and photographer whose work has been widely published as a contributor to literary magazines, as a correspondent for Catholic Times, and for the past 23 years as a writer for the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project. He is a member of the reorganized Quincy Bicycle Club and has logged more than 10,000 miles on bicycles in his life.
