“To explore is to seek, and to picture is to gather the evidence so all can see and benefit.”
Arthur C. Pillsbury, Introduction to “Picturing Miracles of Plant and Animal Life” (1937)
Oh, if only cars could fly! That thought likely sparkled in the mind of famed photographer and inventor, Arthur Clarence Pillsbury, as he built the ramp for the Studebaker Big Six that would be the star of his “photo-op” at Glacier Point in 1916. Perched on a ridge high above Yosemite Valley, the ramp could easily be envisioned as a runway from which to launch the behemoth automobile into the sky above Yosemite Valley! -- See photo below right retrieved 7-24-22 from California State Library/PHOTO CREDIT: Pillsbury, Arthur C. (Arthur Clarence); Pillsbury Picture Co. 1916.
If there was anyone who could find a way to do that, Mr. Pillsbury could! It's not that he had an obsession with flying. No, not by any means. However, flying and seeing things from an elevated perspective simply brought him great joy in the same way as did his many other pursuits in life. He sought to go where others would not go and to view things in a way that others could not or were not willing to do so.
Additionally, Mr. Pillsbury always had room in his heart to generously share what he saw and discovered with others. Like his good friend, John Muir, Arthur C. Pillsbury gravitated toward “pathless places,” places that had no marked boundaries and where others hesitated to venture. His disposition stimulated creative and innovative works that still live with us, that still expand our view of the “miracles” of the natural world, that still enhance appreciation for them, and that still promote their preservation.
This desire to seek out “pathless places” especially saw fulfillment during Mr. Pillsbury’s senior year as a Mechanical Engineering student at Stanford University. At that time, he sought to develop a circuit panorama camera. Although he had already invented a specimen slicer for the microscope in 1895, his senior advisor told him his efforts to build a circuit panorama camera would fail, and that it could not be done. For A. C. Pillsbury, that statement merely served as an invitation to go where his professor would not go.
Mr. Pillsbury successfully completed the building of the panorama camera as his Senior Project. In fact, after his time at Stanford, he made his way to Alaska to shoot photos of the headwaters of the Yukon River and the settlement of Nome during the Gold Rush in 1898. The chronicling of his extensive travels with his panorama camera produced unique and encompassing prints that remain a treasure today.
PHOTO CREDIT ABOVE: Arthur C. Pillsbury Collection, National Park Service. YUKON-CHARLEY RIVERS NATIONAL PRESERVE, Dawson City, Yukon Panorama/1899 Arthur Clarence Pillsbury photographs, Dawson to Circle City
PHOTO CREDIT ABOVE: Arthur C. Pillsbury Collection, National Park Service. YUKON-CHARLEY RIVERS NATIONAL PRESERVE, Circle City, Alaska Panorama/1899 Arthur Clarence Pillsbury photographs, Dawson to Circle City
PHOTO CREDIT ABOVE: Arthur C. Pillsbury Collection, National Park Service. YUKON-CHARLEY RIVERS NATIONAL PRESERVE, Dawson City, Yukon Panorama/1899 Arthur Clarence Pillsbury photographs, Dawson to Circle City
But back to flying! As an innovator and inventor, Mr. Pillsbury took note of the quest to fly that filled the social “buzz” of the times. With the Wright Brothers and others successfully producing sustained flights during the early 20th century, his desire to see things from above never wavered. He understood that a bird’s-eye view, not afforded to just anyone, would become, in itself, a valued perspective to bring delight and awe to others.
By 1910, the year that President Roosevelt became the first president to fly in an airplane, Mr. Pillsbury found his own means to elevate his perspective for his photography work: helium balloons. He used these balloons to get that “bird’s eye view” and to photograph extensive “panoramas of cities and large tracts of land” according to an article by Thomas Lloyd published in Camera Craft in March 1910 (Retrieved from acpillsburyfoundation.com).
Lloyd also writes about one particular Pillsbury adventure in which he attempted to photograph the San Francisco Wharf area from his helium-filled balloon. Due to the weight of his camera equipment, the balloon started to fall from the sky. Pillsbury unloaded his cameras onto the attending boat that navigated near the sinking balloon. However, having been relieved of its burden, the balloon then accelerated upwards. A sudden and vigorous breeze snatched the balloon, breaking its tether from the boat and sending Mr. Pillsbury on a real “flying” journey towards “pathless places”!
Remarkably, Pillsbury was found, according to Lloyd, “at eight-thirty that evening, we picked him up in Newark, about 31 miles south of San Francisco, in a mud-bespattered condition, none the worse for his severe bumping and cold salt-water bath.” Mr. Pillsbury reported that his only regret during that “interesting” ride in the air, was that he did not have his camera when he reached the maximum altitude because his view from there was the “most wonderful” he had ever seen.
Mr. Pillsbury loved those “most wonderful” and elevated views of life. They brought him exhilaration and joy which came to be reflected in his photographs. His description of his attendance at the first public air show in the United States held in Los Angeles at the Dominguez Hills airfield also reflects this exhilaration and joy.
He shared his account of that event in the March 1910 issue of Sunset Magazine (Retrieved from acpillsburyfoundation.org). High above in his helium-filled balloon, he reported that it was his “good fortune to have a solitary seat in a captive-balloon some three-hundred feet above the heads of the people in the grandstand at the Los Angeles aviation field, and to have the ‘bird-men’ circling below, on a level, and at times in the sky above me.”
He added, “It was a daily position to be envied really by occupants of the grandstand and boxes who had paid many dollars for their lower vantage points. At a height of three hundred feet above the forty thousand spectators, sounds came in waves and masses, and the shrill barking of souvenir programs, hot peanuts, and bottled beer vendors was like the sharp rattle of small guns in a cannonade.”
Mr. Pillsbury not only delighted in sharing his unique perspective of these aerial events, but he also found kinship with those pilots flying the “heavier-than-air machines” as he once called them. Eventually, the thought of flying over the ultimate “pathless place,” Yosemite Valley, to gain the finest views imaginable, sparked his efforts to make that dream a reality. If anyone could, Mr. Pillsbury would be the one. Of course, he knew this would require one of those “heavier-than-air machines” rather than getting airborne off of a homemade ramp with a piston-pushing Studebaker.
Consequently, in 1916 he shared his idea of having the first airplane fly over Yosemite Valley with Yosemite Superintendent, W. B. Lewis. By 1919, he arranged to team with First Lt. James S. Krull, a seasoned and well-known pilot to take photos in the second seat of Lt. Krull’s Curtiss airplane. On May 27, 1919, Lt. Krull “manned” the aircraft and Mr. Pillsbury “manned” the photography equipment for a successful flight. Although most photos from that flight are no longer available due to a fire that burned Mr. Pillsbury’s Yosemite Valley Studio, a few proud items remain. -- See photo below courtesy of the acpillsburyfoundation.org
PHOTO CREDIT ABOVE: Arthur C. Pillsbury Foundation: First Aerial Flight over Yosemite, May 27, 1919. Posted with permission from Acpillsburyfoundation.org.
A. C. Pillsbury later joined with other pilots to fly over Yosemite Valley, sharing his aerial motion pictures in the evenings with those who visited his studio in the Valley.
To reach such heights of innovation and discovery is, in Mr. Pillsbury’s words, a “position to be envied really by occupants of the grandstand.” By sharing his elevated perspective, however, those of us in the “grandstand” also come to soar over “pathless places.” Through his work and his inventions, our view of the “miracles” of the natural world expands. Additionally, our appreciation of those miracles goes far beyond any boundaries, and we do not hesitate to venture forth to preserve them.
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