Industry History | United Airlines — The Airmail Field That Became a Campus
· 1926-4
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Industry History | United Airlines — The Airmail Field That Became a Campus
kevin
People treat United Airlines as a Chicago carrier that was always based in Willis Tower.
The first contracted flight left a gravel strip beside the Boise River.
On 6 April 1926 Leon Dewey Cuddeback took a Swallow biplane off from Pasco, Washington, at 6:20 a.m. on Contract Air Mail route 5 and landed at Boise around 10:10 a.m.
Walter T. Varney's Varney Air Lines had won CAM-5 as the only bidder. Headquarters were in Boise. The field had been cleared in two months on a river bar that is now the Boise State University campus.
The first outbound bag from Boise included two Idaho potatoes postmarked to President Calvin Coolidge.
Varney later added Salt Lake City, Portland, and Seattle. In 1930 United Aircraft and Transport Corporation bought the line and folded it with Boeing Air Transport, Pacific Air Transport, and National Air Transport.
United Air Lines, Inc. was incorporated on 28 March 1931 to manage those subsidiaries. After the 1934 air-mail scandal broke the parent into Boeing, United Aircraft, and United Air Lines, the airline kept Varney's 1926 date as its founding year.
Boise moved its airport to the Bench in 1939. The riverside strip became college ground.
The mechanism is the Kelly Act of 1925: the Post Office paid private operators to fly mail, and passenger seats were a sideline that only later ate the business.
Stand on the BSU river side and you are on the first United pin, not at O'Hare.
Photo: period airmail aircraft in the public domain; site is the former College Field.
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