Eyewitness to Octave Chanute’s Aviation Experiments

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Before he died in 1949, Henry S. Bunting wrote a collection of reminiscences dealing with his days as a young reporter. Several of his memoirs, including the one printed here that he called ‘Primitive Bird Man, were recently discovered among his papers by his daughter, Elisabeth Bunting Crouse, who made Primitive Bird Man available for publication in Aviation History.

My city editor leaned over my shoulder at 4 o’clock on a September day in 1896 just as I finished typing my afternoon assignment. I want you to catch the Chicago & Eastern Indiana train in 45 minutes, he said-It’s the only train that stops at Dune Park between East Chicago and Michigan City. Here’s a requisition for expense. A man named Chanute is hidden down there in the dunes with a flying machine he invented. Find him-stay with him-get a story.

That was the way I came to be identified with the first aeronautical experimental expedition in history and saw the collection of scientific data that laid the foundation for what became the science and art of flying.

Is the story exclusive? I asked.

I suppose so-I don’t know, the city editor replied. It’s covered with secrecy. One of Chanute’s men came to town to visit his girl Sunday and told her about it. She’s chummy with our maid and in turn told her about it-in strict confidence, of course; so she told my wife. Stay with it till you get the story.

There was not time to go by my room for a light overcoat, and at about 6 o’clock I got off at Dune Park, Ind., a solitary way station and switch track loaded with sand cars. Behind the one-room telegrapher’s station, a high ridge of sand stretched east and west like a miniature mountain range, with Lake Michigan somewhere beyond it. I asked directions of the operator. He was noncommittal. I explained I was on my way to the Chanute camp and would be grateful for directions. He knew nothing about it.

Can I get a livery rig or farm wagon for a little journey?

The fellow laughed outright, jibing, Man alive, do you take this for a town? Even a farm country? That hut a mile away is my only neighbor, with no road to it through the swamp.

How far is it to Lake Michigan?

Two miles, air line-when you walk it, seems 10.

I asked him to be a good fellow and tell me how to reach the beach. It would be easy to keep a north direction by the sun, he said, and if I went straight without getting lost I ought to make it before dark. I set out to scale the sand ridge with feet sinking to over shoe tops in the soft, sliding sand. It was like going uphill in heavy snow, and I stopped to rest halfway up. A whistle from the station called me, and the operator was waving to return, so I was back in short time.

Reporter man, he said in a kind way, I haven’t the heart to let you get lost in the dunes all night, and that’s what you’re heading for. It’ll be getting dark in two hours and you’ll be nowhere-lost, cold and hungry. I’m under promise not to give out information and I won’t give any; but I’ll talk about you-you’re starting off in the wrong direction if you intend to eat supper tonight.

With that hint I again started my climb of the dune, but in the opposite direction, elated by the feeling I now had some idea where I was going.

At the top, a desert panorama spread out-north, east, west as far as the eye reached. Lake Michigan was nowhere in sight. The undulating sea of sand with its high swells and deep swales resembled the Atlantic tossed by a hurricane. There was a monotonous alternation of hills and canyons, with some mountainous cones of sand in the distance.

Looking down from the height, the flat Indiana prairie stretched away to the southern horizon, lush green, swampish. Nature was staging another exciting battle here between life and death as in the Ice Age, with a sand invasion instead of ice. This great, yellowish sand monster that seemed to cover half the visible earth evidently had climbed up out of Lake Michigan and was conquering the marsh inch by inch as it moved inward, burying the marsh grasses and flowers. And this marvelous geological transformation was taking place within 50 miles of Chicago’s crowded Loop.

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Tags: Aircraft, Aviation History, Flight Technology, Social History

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