THIS MONTH'S FAVORITE PHILATELIC ARTICLE

From the Fall 1990 Heliograph (#16)

The First Official Air Mail in Arizona


Many collectors are under the impression that air mail service
in Arizona began on October 15, 1930, when Douglas, Tucson, and
Phoenix were first served by the air mail route between Atlanta and
Los Angeles. There were two official air mail events preceeding this
1930 flight. 

On October 10, 1924, the Navy dirigible U.S.S. Shenandoah dropped
a small amount of mail over Gila Bend, Arizona, in the course of an 
official flight from Lakehurst, New Jersey to the Pacific Coast. Mail 
carried coast to coast on this flight is plentiful. The mail bore a
cachet "By Dirigible Shenandoah" and an October 8th postmark of the
Naval Air Station at Lakehurst. Ordinary first class postal rates
applied. It is possible that the drop mail was back stamped at Gila
Bend.

Actually, the first official air mail in Arizona was nine years 
prior to the dirigible drop mail. Aviatrix Katherine Stinson transported
small amounts of mail on three flights, November 4, 5, and 6, 1915 from
the Southern Arizona Fair Grounds a few miles and dropped in near the 
back door of the Tucson post office. This was during the three-day annual
fair. Postmaster J.M. Ronstadt received authorization from Washington to
open a special post office at the fair and set up a special exhibit to 
advertise the new parcel post service. The exhibit, under the grandstand,
showed merchandise of every description that could be mailed by parcel
post. 

The post office department in Washington assigned air mail route 
number 668.001 to Tucson for these flights. Katherine Stinson flew a 
Partridge tractor biplane with a Gnome motor previously used by the famous
pioneer aviator Lincoln Beachey. 

Miss Stinson was a nineteen year old stunt pilot. She usually wore a
white middy blouse and dark bloomers when flying. She came to Tucson by
rail on the Sunset Limited from Mobile, Alabama, where she had put on a 
stunt flying exhibition.

The above postal card is handstamped with the special pioneer airmail
cancellation used on the mail carried by Katherine Stinson. The problem
with this item is that the cancellation was applied years after the event.
It seems that while the cancelling device was in the hands of postal
officials in storage it developed a "warp" on the bottom line of the
killer - under the "ds" of "grounds". Cancellations applied contemporaneously
with the Stinson pioneer air mail flight do not have the warp.
Someone got a hold of the device and used it to manufacture "pioneer
air mail postal history". Strangely, neither the handstamp nor the postal
card are forgeries. This is a case of the handstamp being fraudulently 
used long after the special event it commemorated. Only knowing the story
of the warped cancellation device will prevent collectors from buying
spurious items.