Collection: Books and Periodicals > Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins

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Title: Volume 053-2 - April 1999 Collection Type: Books and Periodicals Collection Name: Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins # of Pages: 10 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2014-03-05 08:18:50 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 04:06:01 Last Updated: 2025-04-22 07:39:26

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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— > Lyman Gilmore by Jessica Bamber Winner of Honorable Mention in the 1998 Nevada County Historical Society's Student Speech Contest All around the world people tryin’ to be first one in the skies. He just wanted to fly. Get himself up in the air, get himself up in the air. (Sung to the tune of Sugar Ray’s “Fly”) YMAN GILMORE WAS BORN JULY 11, 1874 TO Lyman Gilmore Sr. and Sarah Gilmore, in Olympia, Washington, Lyman Gilmore Jr was an inventor who had a dream of flying. His parents noticed how strange it was that Lyman Gilmore didn’t play with other kids. Instead, he watched the birds fly and tried to figure out how he could do the same before cars were even being built. During summer break the year he was 17 Lyman built an orinthoper type plane by attaching flapping wings to his bicycle. It kept in the air for a few seconds, but Lyman was not satisfied, so he designed another plane. His dad thought it was foolish and put his foot down, insisting that he would break his neck. Furthermore, money going toward the endeavor was intended for the education of Lyman and his 10 other siblings. So, when Lyman was almost 20 he moved out of his parents’ house and in with his brother Sam near Redding, California, where he worked on a farm and continued experimenting with flight. In fact, his first flight was that same year when he built a 30-foot glider towed by a horse. To take off and land he had to do the old Fred Flintstone maneuver of using his feet and running. In 1895 his brother found a ranch between Colfax and Iowa Hill. Lyman moved with his brother and continued his experiments with planes around the canyons of the North Fork American River near Colfax. As with many great inventors, Lyman was further inspired by a vision. He saw a “great air ship sailing over mountains and hills carrying smiling people.” He was so confident he’d found the key to flight that he wrote the American War Department recommending they invest in a fleet of airships so they could drop a “downpour of dynhamite” on the enemy. Ironically, the War Department disregarded the suggestion and only a few decades later they dropped a “downpour” of nuclear “dynamite” on Hiroshima in World War II. Not only did Gilmore design planes but he applied for patents for a water cooler/purifier, an internal combustion engine and engine powered by “natural” power and a steam engine. In 1902 he was only awarded a patent for his steam engine because he had a tendency to leave out crucial elements on his plans for fear of somebody stealing his ideas. Despite all this, Gilmore continued his attempts to fly. NCHS Bulletin April 1999 On December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers made a flight at Kitty Hawk. Too bad for Gilmore, [who claimed that] 19 months earlier he’d made the first successful flight, but the Wright Brothers got credit. Maybe Gilmore should have had more witnesses for the occasion and a photographer. Oh well, that’s the breaks, At least he had his air strip. Not only was it the on the west coast but the first commercial air strip inthe nation. It opened on March 15, 1905,and remained on the active list until 1957. Gilmore continued his attempts of flight. In 1909, after the Grass Valley Union and the Sacramento Bee ran articles about him, he invited friends and investors to witness the flight. He made two successful flights that day, but it was later believed that the plane was not powered, or perhaps powered by remote control. Nevertheless, investors from Sacramento and San Francisco were very interested in the Gilmore Air Ship Co., so they bought shares for $1, a big difference from what shares go for nowadays, but this was 1910. By this time Wilbur Wright had already flown over France and Gilmore was still trying to get his endeavor off the ground and keep it off the ground. He invited people back out to his air strip to witness another flight. This time the crankshaft broke, sending pieces of the engine all over his shop. He replaced the engine and again people came to see the flying Californian in Grass Valley. Prone to mishaps, after driving the plane around the field for a while, the wheel struck a boulder and tipped, smashing a wing. None of these incidents stopped Gilmore from building and designing planes. It has been said that for 1908 he had an extremely advanced design. Retractable landing gear on the first monoplane, the only thing Gilmore was missing in his plane was an FM radio with a CD player. In 1935 a fire from a watchmaker’s candle destroyed Gilmore’s wooden hanger, his planes and models. Occasionally he was seen kicking the mangled metal of his melted plane through the weeds at his air strip. He never did marry or rebuild his collection. Gilmore continued to mine on some family claims. He was honored with the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for his contributions to the system of air travel and also at an air show, so it is not as if he never got recognized for any of his work. He just didn’t get recognized for the first flight and he didn’t get his name put in an abundance of history books like the Wright brothers did. He moved to Nevada City and carried out the rest of his days mining and wandering around town telling people about imaginary trips to the moon and Mars. He would tell people, “Of course, not physically, but I have worked out all the details in my head, and that’s just as good.” On February 18, 1951, at nearly 77, Gilmore died from a stroke he’d suffered days earlier. People definitely thought Gilmore was a strange bird with his talk of space travel and 5