Community members gather Tuesday to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the first ever non-stop flight from Anchorage to Fairbanks.
A wooden sculpture of aviator Noel Wien , created by Alaskan artist Amanda O'Neill, stands outside Pike's Waterfront Lodge July 3, 2024, in Fairbanks, Alaska.FAIRBANKS, Alaska - On July 15, 1924, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported that two “plucky” airmen had landed at Week’s Field.
Pilot Noel Wien and Mechanic William Yunker had just finished the first non-stop flight from Anchorage to Fairbanks in an open-cockpit biplane, weaving northward through reportedly dense smoke. Now a well-established route in an aviation-dependent state, today the same trip takes less than an hour. For Wien and Yunker’s 1924 journey, though, the flight lasted three hours and 45 minutes. One hundred years later, the Fairbanks community acknowledged that feat of aviation once again at a Tuesday evening event at Pike’s Landing. With the Chena River as backdrop, boats drifted casually by behind a stout stage lined with colors of the American and Alaska flags. The unmistakable scent of barbecue lingered in the air from three hundred pounds of cooked ribs. And hundreds of people — the extended Wien family, pilots, politicians, pioneers and history buffs — filed into the available seats, spilling into the standing room on either flank, to celebrate Wien completing this once cutting-edge journey. “We are glad he did, because Noel stayed, and his family stayed. Many Wiens stayed,” Pike’s Landing Owner Jay Ramras said from the stage. Noel Wien founded Wien Alaska Airways about three years after his 1924 journey. Planes occasionally soared overhead into and out of Fairbanks International Airport Tuesday, with their passengers and pilots quite possibly unaware of the parallelism that was not lost on those on the ground. For their part, attendees often smiled, whooped and clapped as the machines above them carved through the sky. The event also drew four of Alaska’s Republican politicians onto the stage, including Governor Mike Dunleavy, Lieutenant Governor Nancy Dahsltrom, and U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan. Each delivered prepared speeches or recalled family stories about the Wiens in front of the large audience. “It’s these shared stories that I think really ingrain in us what is so special — so special about Alaska, so special about the Interior,” said Murkowski, whose family is friendly with the Wiens. Noel Wien’s son, Richard Wien, followed the elected officials with remarks of his own, mentioning, among other memories, that his father’s time in a flying circus prior to 1924 fostered useful skills. “That experience, coupled with a very cautious nature, helped keep him alive and survive the many years of flying in the Alaska wilderness. That cautious nature was passed down to my brother Merrill and I, and many others, and kept us safe in our flying,” he said. As the past was celebrated, issues from the present also seeped into the event as about a dozen Pro-Palestinian protestors made their voices heard from the sidewalk bordering Pike’s. “Politicians you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide,” the protestors said in call and response format, among other chants, which sometimes overlapped with speakers’ remarks. Back by the stage, wind teased an early reveal of the handmade wooden sculpture depicting Wien, created by Alaskan artist Amanda O’Neill. Unveiled at the end of the evening, Wien’s sculpture then went on a journey of its own — though it required much less than three hours and 45 minutes. Ratcheted into the back of a John Deere utility vehicle, the sculpture traveled across Pike’s property to a curated exhibit outside an aviation-themed portion of the hotel. There, Pike’s employees installed Wien’s likeness, enshrined alongside a selection of ephemera and a plane in which he once flew, where he will stand indefinitely, but perhaps not for another 100 years.
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