News photo — Chris Gaige A presentation slide featuring a July 4, 1930 News article reporting on a three-day air show taking place in Lake Placid. The presentation, titled “High Flying Adventures,” was delivered by author and pilot Aurora Pfaff as part of the Lake Placid-North Elba Historical Society’s Winter Speaker Series held at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts on Wednesday, March 19.

LAKE PLACID — The Lake Placid-North Elba Historical Society’s Winter Speaker Series soared to new heights on Wednesday, March 19 as local author Aurora Pfaff presented on the history of aviation in the Adirondacks.

Titled “High Flying Adventures,” Pfaff drew on her extensive research that she conducted — and personal experience as a pilot — as she wrote “Aviation in the Adirondacks,” which was released in June 2024.

She began her presentation by taking the roughly 40-person audience that had gathered at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts back over a century ago to 1912. She shared the story of the first flight to take place in the Adirondacks, which was performed by George Gray. Suffice it to say, Gray wasn’t putting on a show in an aircraft that in any way resembled what we’re used to today.

Pfaff showed a picture of the aircraft, which she described as more of a “contraption” than anything. Gray purchased it for $500, which he raised through flying lessons and demonstrations. To give the audience a sense of the instrumentation Gray was relying on, she said he measured wind speed and direction by tying a handkerchief to the plane.

“This is it,” she said. “It’s a contraption, essentially, and it worked. But, you had to be a little bit brave, a bit clever and a bit ingenious to take something like this on.”

News photo —Chris Gaige Lake Placid-North Elba Historical Society Director Chris Malmgren, left, and author, presenter and pilot Aurora Pfaff draw Dave Nicola (not pictured) of Lake Placid as the evening’s raffle winner following Pfaff’s “High Flying Adventures” presentation on the history of aviation in the Adirondacks.

Pfaff said Gray’s intrepid antics opened the floodgates for aviation, and it soon transformed how people interacted with the Adirondacks, opening up areas of the wilderness that — at that time and, in some spots, still to this day — are otherwise inaccessible aside from flying into.

“This flight, this adventure, these few days in October, 1912, really started a period of time when aviation bloomed in the Adirondacks,” she said. “It changed the way people traveled and it changed the areas of the Adirondacks that people were able to access.”

Pfaff emphasized how mind-bogglingly beautiful aerial views were of the Lake Placid region for first-time flyers at the time, who had never experienced anything remotely similar. She said that while today, we take these views for granted, thanks to either first-hand experience from flying or an abundance of photos taken from above from planes, helicopters, drones or other types of aircraft.

“It was such a different way of viewing this world that we love and that we know,” she said.

Pfaff gave a brief history of the Lake Placid Airport, which she said opened to the public in 1939. It played host to a slew of famous aviators, such as Charles Lindbergh, and celebrities over the decades.

Lindbergh was in Lake Placid to recruit for the Army Air Corps in World War II, making it up from Long Island in about 75 minutes.

Pfaff also described some of the more daring aviation stunts performed in the area, including a steeple chase around Whiteface Mountain and wing-walking performances as part of a July 4 to 6, 1930 air circus show, as reported by the News at the time.

These daring feats inspired then-spectators to become pilots themselves, fueling the growth of aviation in the Adirondacks, according to Pfaff.

“That was becoming the norm. That was the thing,” she said. “People had their own planes and they would take off and they didn’t have to worry about regulations to a certain extent. That came later. But, there was really a sense of excitement.”

Pfaff shared a story of how growing aviation routes helped to connect Lake Placid to the rest of the nation — and world. As soon as editions of the New York Times came off the press just after 1 a.m. on Aug. 2, 1929, they were rushed to Grand Central Station and delivered to Albany by train, where they were then trucked to the airport and flown to Lake Placid by two planes that took off from Albany at 5:18 and 5:19 a.m., according to an article that ran in the New York Times the next day. More than 1,500 copies were delivered to hotels and other spots in Lake Placid and Saranac Lake between 7 and 8 a.m. that morning.

“The combined speed of the train, trucks and planes had brought The New York Times to the heart of the Adirondacks at about the same time that late-rising residents of New York City were getting their papers,” the article stated.

Pfaff said a particularly enjoyable part of writing the book was learning about the people behind the planes.

“It’s not interesting at all if it’s just a list of planes,” she said. “I like planes. They’re cool. They’re fun, but that would be the most boring book I could possibly write, and you probably wouldn’t want to read it either.”

Pfaff shared the story of Elanor Smith, nicknamed the “Flying Flapper.” At the age of 17, she flew under the four bridges of Manhattan’s East River — because her friends dared her to. She began flight lessons at the age of 10, and had her pilot’s license certified by Orville Wright when she was 16. Smith also set numerous altitude records at the time.

“She was a very, very good pilot,” Pfaff said. “Surviving flying under the bridges of the East River is no small feat.”

Smith came to Lake Placid in September 1928. She introduced pilots flying New York Times copies to — what were, at the time — cutting-edge parachutes in case of an emergency, as pilots often had to battle heavy fog and other inclement weather in their routes to and from Lake Placid. The pilots debuted the parachutes, making “exhibition jumps” for spectators. They had successful landings and expressed satisfaction for the technology.

Pfaff fielded several questions and aviation stories from audience members. Following that, Pfaff and Lake Placid-North Elba Historical Society Director Chris Malmgren drew a raffle, which included a copy of “Aviation in the Adirondacks,” wine and chocolate. The lucky winner was David Nicola, of Lake Placid.

To view “High Flying Adventures” in its entirety, visit tinyurl.com/3w5vkas9.