The visit of noted aviator Walter E. Johnson to the Lykens Valley began in Elizabethville, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, where his aeroplane arrived by freight on the Lykens Valley Railroad, 16 September 1913. The disassembled plane was unloaded there and transported by wagon to the nearby farm of Alfred Bechtel, where it was reassembled by Johnson and his mechanic Earl Beers. Once assembled, it was flown to the Gratz Fair.
At the same time that the plane was to be featured at the Gratz Fair, the Lykens Valley was struggling with the on-again, off-again promise of the completion of the Midland Pennsylvania Railroad, which if completed to Gratz at the time, would have made the transport of the plane to Gratz much easier than it was without the Midland Railroad.
Boards of Trade were a popular method of encouraging investment in Lykens Valley, and each community had one in 1913, including Elizabethville.
This brief piece of information was printed in the Elizabethville Echo of 25 September 1913:
The first thing Walter E. Johnson, the aviator, did when he struck Elizabethville on September 16th was to hunt up an officer of the Board of Trade. Which proves again the value that men elsewhere place upon institutions of this character in any community.
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News clipping from Newspapers.com.
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