Aircraft Over Clinton
When I first saw this photograph hanging in the restaurant of the Clinton Inn, I thought it was a striking reminder of a time when both airborne vehicles and horse-drawn carriages coexisted. The horse-drawn carriages are there, though difficult to see in this image. It also raised a question: why were there planes flying above Clinton? The aircraft depicted looked very early, not much different from the Wright brothers' original flyer. So why would such a brand-new, novel technology be in a small town like Clinton? Henry Ford had an interest in both Clinton and aviation—was that the link? But where was the airstrip? What event caused two aircraft to be flying at the same time? I returned to Clinton, notebook in hand, to search the archives for answers to this little-known but intriguing story. When I asked one of the owners of the Clinton Inn, his response was both exciting and disappointing: "It's a fake." He explained that he had read an article in a local ma...