Letters from Heaven

One hundred years ago a relay of airplanes and pilots carried the first mail from New York to San Francisco

DeHavilland DH4. Public Domain, courtesy of the San Diego Air & Space Museum Archive / Wikimedia.org

New York, Sept. 8, 1920. A solitary airplane, piloted by Rudolph G. Page, lifted off from Curtis Field’s grass runway just before sunrise this morning. As dawn silvered the sky, Page’s biplane, loaded with four hundred pounds of mail, turned west…