Old Photos

I'm talking really old photos.  Like 98 years old.  I follow the Museum of the Big Bend on the book of faces.  If you are not familiar with the Big Bend, it is an area in West Texas, almost as far as you can go West in Texas relatively speaking.  The Rio Grande River makes a huge bend giving Texas part of its distinctive shape that it is well known for worldwide.  The museum posted some old photos a while back and got me to thinking about some that I have that were taken by my Grandfather while he was in the Army Air Service.  There was no 'air force' in those days it was still part of the Army.  The specific unit he was in was the 464th Aero Squadron.  They were based at Kelly Field in San Antonio.

My Grandfather joined at the age of 19.5 years in 1919.  He wasn't sent somewhere across the country to do his time, he was assigned to his hometown, San Antonio.  His squadron was tasked with building emergency landing strips for the DeHavilland DH4 biplanes they used to patrol the border during those days.  From the photos he took, apparently crash landings were pretty common with those old planes.  Things were still a bit tense with the Villistas in Mexico in those days, so I assume that was part of the reason for the patrols, although smuggling was what he said was going on.  They started building the air strips in McAllen, Texas and worked their way along the Rio Grande all the way to Ajo, Arizona.  He put together an album of photos from this adventure that I find fascinating.  He used one of those old Kodak box cameras and got some amazing shots.  I have that camera and the album. 

I decided to contact the museum and see if they would like to see the photos.  No, not the originals.  I won't let those out of my hands.  I offered to digitize them and send them.  I would only scan the photos relating to the Big Bend area as there are way too many others and they wouldn't really be related to what they do.  They are considering printing them out for their Archives.  I hope they can use them and others can see something I think is pretty cool.  

Be sure and 'click' on the photos for a better view and maybe you can see my Grandfather's notes.

This is my Grandfather 

These are most of them.

Happy Trails