S.B. Historical Museum

Aviator Earle Ovington

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The name Ovington may already be familiar to many South Coast residents. For years, Audrey Ovington operated Cold Spring Tavern, a former stagecoach stop up off San Marcos Pass. What may be less well known to locals is that Audrey’s father, Earle Ovington, was the first official air mail pilot in the United States.

Earle Ovington was born in Chicago in 1879. In 1898, he went to work for Thomas Edison as an x-ray technician and then caught on with the Edison Electric Illuminating Company. After a short affiliation with the New York Telephone Company, he matriculated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduated with a degree in electrical engineering in 1904. He then went into business for himself, founding a number of self-named companies. He was eventually bitten by the aviation bug, and in 1911, he headed off for France to attend the aeronautical school run by one of the world’s most famous aviators, Louis Blériot, who had become the first, in 1909, to fly across the English Channel. After graduating from the school, Ovington returned to the U.S., soon to make aviation history.

Ovington began to develop a reputation as a pilot of rare skill. He was the first aviator to overfly Boston; he won events worth $2,500 and $10,000 in Ohio and Massachusetts, respectively, and was a money winner in a major aviation meet in Chicago. In September 1911, he arrived in Garden City, Long Island, to take part in an international air show. It was here that U.S. Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock decided to establish this country’s first officially sanctioned air mail service.

Hitchcock had been mulling this over for almost a year, but nothing had yet come of his ideas. Meanwhile, the British, French, and Italians had all executed air mail flights. Obviously there was an element of national competition at work here.

At Garden City, a number of mailboxes were set up around the grandstand area. The response of the audience was enthusiastic; thousands of pieces of mail were stuffed into the boxes, then processed in a large white tent marked “U.S. Mail Aeroplane Station No. 1.” Two British pilots taking part in the show were first approached, but they demanded to be paid. Then Ovington was asked and he jumped at the chance to be “the first.”

On September 23, Ovington’s small monoplane, designed by Blériot and christened The Dragonfly, was rolled out onto the field. Hitchcock had fully expected to go along for the ride and be a part of history. When he saw that The Dragonfly was a single-seater, he almost cancelled the event, but Ovington convinced him otherwise. The aviator then swore an oath to support the Constitution and defend the mail. And so it was that the engine was fired up and Ovington was handed the bag containing more than 1,900 pieces of mail. The cockpit was so small that Ovington had to rest the bag between his legs and steer the plane with his feet.

The flight took all of three minutes, from Garden City to Mineola, flying at a top speed of about 60 miles per hour. By prearrangement, a local postal official stood in a field waving a flag to mark the drop point. Ovington roared overhead and let the bag fly, which prompted the official to scurry out of the way. The aviator’s aim was perfect, although the bag burst open on impact, causing a flurry of activity to retrieve the scattered pieces. Ovington returned to Garden City a famous man and would make repeat deliveries during the course of the meet.

The Ovington family moved to Santa Barbara in 1920, where Ovington carved out a career as an engineer. He was also a pivotal figure in early aviation here; for many years, he operated the Casa Loma airfield, one of the South Coast’s firsts, where the municipal golf course is now. One of the airfield’s hangers was later moved and today serves as the Santa Cruz Market in downtown Goleta. Earle Ovington, the first air mail pilot in U.S. history, died at the relatively young age of 57 in 1936.

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