Before Walmart made Bentonville, famous, aviator icon and pioneer Louise Thaden put the small Arkansas town on the map! As a single woman, she moved to San Francisco as a sales representative for Travel Air Corporation. A perk of the job was flying lessons, and in 1928 she earned her pilot’s certificate. A year later, she held her transport license, and i simultaneously held the record for women’s altitude, endurance, and speed. A first for a woman!
Air racing was where money could be made and one could prove their aviator skills, but women were largely barred from competing. The first all-women air race, the Women’s Air Derby was organized 1929 to break down barriers that women weren’t capable flyers. 20 women competed traveling from Santa Monica, California to Cleveland, Ohio, and Thaden came in first place. After the race, women pilots, including Thaden, established The Ninety-Nines, an organization founded in 1929 by women pilots for women pilots.
When the women were finally able to complete against the men, Louise Thaden and her co-pilot Blanche Noyes won the 1936 Bendix Transcontinental Trophy Race. They set a new world record of 14 hours, 55 minutes from New York City to Los Angeles, California. In her spectacular victory, Thaden flew her Beech C17R Staggerwing biplane, defeating twin-engine planes designed for racing. They won the $7,000 prize money, but the gratification of beating all the men competing was even greater.
She retired from air races in 1938, and worked in the Bureau of Air Commerce. She also wrote extensively about aviation for newspapers and magazines, and her autobiography, High, Wide and Frightened. In 1951, the airport in Bentonville was renamed Louise Thaden Field in her honor. Her impact on aviation and what women fliers were capable of cannot be diminished.
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