Aviation in Agawam, 1860-1982
Agawam’s connection to local aviation dates back as far as 1860, when Winsted, Connecticut “aeronaut” Harlow M. Spencer and his daughter Flora landed their balloon “Comet” near the home of Francis Leonard on Cooper Street after a flight from Springfield’s Hampden Park.
From 1912, when fifteen-year-old Raymond Dowd made his first glider flight from the roof of his family’s summer home on Riverview Avenue, until the 1982 closure of Bowles Airport, the skies over Agawam were home to a variety of aircraft.
At Riverside Park in 1913, “The Swedish Aviator” Nels J. Nelson gave the first flying demonstrations in the Connecticut Valley in his Dionne hydroaeroplane. That same year, George E. Dion made two balloon ascensions and parachute drops at Riverside.
Randall Field, located at the Randall Brothers’ Prairie Stock Farm on Main Street, approximately where it intersects with Route 57, was the site of aerial circuses as early as 1924. Massachusetts Airways operated from Randall Field from 1927 until 1931.
Bowles Airport was developed by Congressman Henry L. Bowles on 346 acres of former Hinsdale Smith/Cuba Connecticut Tobacco Co. farmland between Silver Street, Garden Street, and Shoemaker Lane. The three-day dedication celebration, held on 30 & 31 May and 1 June 1930, attracted more than 15,000 attendees, including former president Calvin Coolidge, aviatrix Amelia Earhart, and many of the era’s top pilots.
The New England Air Tour, a four-day, 1,000 mile exercise to map air routes and promote aviation across the region, concluded at Bowles Airport during the first afternoon of the airport’s dedication. Local aviatrix Maude Irving Tait, Massachusetts’ first licensed female pilot, was the first Air Tour participant to land.
On 25 May 1931, nearly 700 Army Air Corps aircraft left Dayton, Ohio en route to Washington, D.C., as part of the three-day Eastern Air Maneuvers, which Army chief of staff General Douglas MacArthur declared “are not a ‘circus’ but a test of preparedness of the air branch of warfare.” More than 400 planes spent the night at Bowles Airport, which commanding officer General Benjamin Foulais described as “the finest field the Division has struck to date.” Among the thousands of spectators visiting Bowles to view the spectacle was Jimmy Doolittle, who arrived in a “snappy yellow-orange and yellow Lockheed monoplane.”
Over the next few years, the Granville Brothers flew their Gee Bee racing planes in and out of Bowles; and aircraft engineer Bob Hall operated his Springfield Aircraft Corporation from Bowles, where he designed his “Cicada” and “Bulldog” aircraft.
The deepening depression and 1932 death of Henry Bowles proved impossible to overcome, and Bowles Airport was redeveloped in 1935 as Agawam Park, after Hampden County voters approved parimutuel horse racing. Three years later, voters reversed their decision, forcing the closure of Agawam Park in 1938. At that time, Bowles reverted to use as an airport, though never again at the scale originally intended.
Walter O’Connor established Northeast Airmotive Corporation in 1941, flying seaplanes from his Connecticut River base at 1000 River Road. He later built a combination sea/land plane base further south on River Road at the current location of Channel, Campbell, and Florida Drives, but was forced to return to his original site in 1948 when that site was closed for zoning violations. For more than four decades, O’Connor’s seaplane was a common sight along the Connecticit River as he flew passengers along the east coast, from Washington D.C. to Newfoundland, Pennsylvania, New York, Cape Cod, and Long Island.
Despite the fact that as many as 65 planes operated from Bowles Airport as late as 1980, the airport was closed in August 1982 and redeveloped as the Agawam Regional Industrial Park. Bowles’ administration building and hangar were demolished, with one of the hangar’s decorative Art Deco concrete lintels donated to the Smithsonian Institution’s Air & Space Museum, and another to the EAA Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The Agawam Historical Association retains several remaining lintels.
Among items that can be viewed at the Agawam Historical & Fire House Museum are postal cachets commemorating Bowles Airport’s dedication signed by pilots Maude Irving Tait and Lowell Bayles, and former president Calvin Coolidge, photographs of the Eastern Air Maneuvers, and a model of Bob Hall’s Bulldog racer. Also on display are rare model stunt planes, packaging, dies, and bankbook from the short-lived Dowae Toys. The company was organized in 1928 by Raymond Dowd (of 1912 glider renown) and his brother Bernard, and declared bankruptcy two years later.