Pasco’s aviation story took flight just after the Wright brothers. How it made its mark

Pasco has an enviable aviation history, with connections to some of the most significant moments dating back almost to the moment in 1903 when the Wright brothers completed their famous flight at Kitty Hawk.

Its first aviator arrived in 1911 to build and fly airplanes at the spot now known as Osprey Point.

Later, it was the birth place of U.S. Air Mail (1926) and then home to Naval Air Station Pasco (1942), one of the busiest pilot training facilities of the World War II effort.

Those stories and far more are on display as the Pasco Aviation Museum reopens for the 2024 season this weekend on the east side of the Tri-Cities Airport.

The museum typically closes during the winter when visitors are scarce, using the downtime to expand its footprint and overhaul its exhibits.

It reopens from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Saturday, April 20. It will remain open each Saturday until winter. Enter via Bergstrom Aircraft Inc., 4102 Stearman Ave., Pasco, on the airport’s east side.

The museum opened in 2019 and has grown into a home for all things aviation. It is dedicated to telling a story that is sometimes overshadowed by that other Tri-Cities story: The Manhattan Project.

The aviation museum is a years-long labor of love by a team of volunteers and their champion, Malin Bergstrom, owner of Bergstrom Aircraft.

Together, they gathered artifacts and stories and have worked to convert the decommissioned NAS Pasco air control tower into home base for Pasco’s surprising aviation history.

The tower itself was built in 1942 to support NAS Pasco and is visible in the distance across the runway from the airport’s passenger terminal.

New in 2024

During the winter break, volunteers completed the transformation of the tower, creating exhibits and visitor amenities on all four levels.

That includes the fourth floor control room where controllers once managed more than 300 training planes assigned to the station.

The work didn’t go unnoticed. The Old Tower and its hangar have been added to the Washington State Historic Register, placing them among 1,600 historic and culturally significant properties in the state.

NAS Pasco was a standout moment in local aviation history. But Pasco has a much deeper history with aviation that dates to the heady years following the Wright brothers’ famous first flight.

Charles Zornes brought aviation to Pasco just seven years after the Kitty Hawk flight. He came to Pasco from St. Louis via Walla Walla in 1911 to design, build and fly experimental airplanes.

He leased land at Osprey Pointe on the Columbia River — now the Port of Pasco — and flew his wood-and-cloth biplanes in the area though not for long.

Zornes was fatally injured in a crash and his business closed in 1912.

Air Mail history

The story picked up 20 years later, in the mid-1920s, when the U.S. government began accepting bids from private carriers to carry Air Mail.

Aviation entrepreneur Walter T. Varney secured the first contact and took off from Pasco in April 1926. It was the first time he or any other private contractor carried U.S. Air Mail.

A Varney Air Lines Swallow biplane left the Pasco airfield with 9,285 pieces of mail weighing 207 pounds, according to Herald archives.

The 5+ hour flight ended in Elko, Nev. and was the first commercial U.S. Air Mail flight ever.

Through a series of mergers, Varney would become United Air Lines. In 1976, United celebrated its 50th anniversary in Pasco. The museum has swag from the event to prove it.

Today, United is one of six commercial carriers serving the Tri-Cities Airport.

Before the airport became a commercial hub for air travel, it was a military one.

NAS Pasco thrives

According to a history compiled by the National Park Service, the U.S. Navy paid $5,000 for about 2,300 acres in Pasco because it wanted to move its Sand Point Naval Air Station inland. It saw Pasco as less susceptible to enemy attack.

About 2,000 Navy pilots earned their wings in Pasco during the war.

NAS Pasco was separate from the ultra-secret work associated with the Manhattan Project, centered in north Richland.

One museum exhibit connects the local aviation community to the atomic weapons work through Day’s Pay, the B-17 “Flying Fortress” bomber. Tri-Citians famously donated a day’s pay to support the bomber and the war effort.

The Boeing-built bomber was christened in Richland before it was put into operation.

Day’s Pay artifacts

It’s first pilot was Arlys D. Wineinger, a native of Kansas. He became something of a local celebrity with residents regularly send letters and cards to keep tabs on him and the plane they sponsored.

Wineinger’s family donated his goggles, his headset, an escape ax and an altimeter he saved as a souvenir after he completed his tour to the Hanford History Project, along with some of the correspondence.

The history project, based at Washington State University Tri-Cities, loaned Wineinger’s Day’s Pay artifacts to the aviation museum for a B-17 exhibit. Visitors can sit at a mock cockpit with working lights and scrutinize the gear he wore into air combat.

The exhibit doubles as a memorial to four airmen who lost their lives in 1943 when an Army Corps B-17 based at Pendleton crashed on a maintenance flight in the Blue Mountains.

Their bodies were recovered, but the wreckage was left behind in the remote, rugged mountains. Over the years, bits and pieces were taken away by collectors.

Bergstrom said collectors began bringing pieces to the museum when it opened, seeing it as a proper home form one of the region’s sadder World War II stories.

The Old NAS Pasco tower is a 1940s building that is not ADA accessible beyond the first floor. Bergstrom hopes to add elevators to the upper floors in the future. In the meantime, the upper floors are accessible by stairs equipped with hand rails.

Go to pascoaviationmuseum.org or call 509-521-7117.

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