Independence airport was last stop on historic race
A mini-exhibit (pictured) at the Independence Heritage Museum sheds light on an historic all-women’s air race, and its local connection. For 12 years, beginning in 1969, the Independence airport served as the finish line for the 750-mile Palms to Pines air race.
/ Photo contributed
A mini-exhibit at Heritage Museum sheds light on how the Independence airport helped shape women’s aviation history.
Mini-exhibits “highlight part of our collection where there’s not enough artifacts to make a permanent exhibit. But it is interesting and relevant to the community,” museum director Natascha Adams said. “So the Palms to Pines, I think, is super cool because it talks about a women’s air race” that is directly tied to Independence.
Palms to Pines was held from 1969 to 2009. Thus, at 40 years, it was, and still is, the longest-running all-women air race in the country’s history, according to published reports.
It attracted between 30 and 60 teams each year. The inaugural race attracted 34 teams, which came from throughout the United States, according to published reports.
John Koich was the Independence connection. Koich approached his flight instructor, Claire L. Walters, about an all-women’s air race from Santa Monica, California, to his hometown of Independence. Even though the airport here consisted only of a grass field and no hangars.
Walters accepted the challenge. She was associated with the race through its entire run and even distributed prizes in 2009. She died the following year.
Santa Monica always served as the starting line. But Independence’s run as the finish line ended after 12 years due to foul weather, even though the race was held in summer. Bend airport replaced Independence airport as the finish.
Planes flew 750 miles over two days. The first leg ended in Merced or Modesto, the overnight stay was in Red Bluff or Redding, the third leg ended in Klamath Falls.
Wally Funk is perhaps the most famous pilot to fly Palms to Pines. Her list of accomplishments include: First woman air safety investigator, Federal Aviation Agency inspector and member of the privately-funded Mercury 13 team, which tested and screened women for space flight, according to published reports.
These reports add Funk, at age 82, became the oldest person as of 2021 to experience suborbital flight when she was launched into space aboard the Blue Origin.
New life was given to Palms to Pines in 2022 when the Los Angeles Chapter of the 99s restarted the race.
But this story’s local connection might have gone untold if not for the diligence of museum staff and volunteers. For it was through their efforts that enough artifacts were found to create a mini-exhibit.
These items included programs, patch, key chain, mugs, t-shirt and correspondence between race organizers. Not to mention enough background information for a text and graphics display.
“We used to have some boxes that weren’t labeled. So we are systematically going through everything, making sure it’s in our database. In doing that, we actually found artifacts related to the Palms to Pines,” Adams said. “It’s nice to highlight women in the community. So it felt like a no-brainer once we found the additional artifacts.”
Uncovering stories like Palms to Pines isn’t the only reason staff inventories the collection.
“We have to go through and make sure we know everything that’s there,” Adams said. “Generally speaking, a museum is systematically going to go through their things to make sure they are being preserved correctly.”
The museum is always on the lookout for artifacts that help tell the Independence story.
“Our donors represent a collection of people who have found a thing here or there and brought it in,” Adams said. “We know folks have things about Independence. We all have that box in our attic, of photographs or memorabilia, that the museum would love to either acquire or, when it comes to photographs, digitize them and give the originals back.”
Museum staff are becoming experts on the art of digitizing, thanks in part to a collaboration with the University Oregon and its historical newspaper project.
The university has “newspapers from its collection online. We reached out to them to ask if they had the same same newspapers we had, and they didn’t,” Adams said. “So, we’re scanning all of that, and we’ll be able to give those digital files to the university, which makes them globally available to folks. So it’s super exciting for a museum our size to be able to contribute something like that.”
The Palms to Pines exhibit runs through January.
Also in January, the Independence Heritage Museum hosts a youth art show in conjunction with Community Services Consortium, at 281 S. 2nd St.
Other shows are coming as well. Keeping a museum fresh is essential if you want people to return.
“People are starting to learn that the exhibits change and they come back,” Adams said of the museum’s reputation. “You don’t want people to come into the museum and say, okay, that’s cool, and then never come back. So we try really hard to change things around quite a bit.”
