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Given the isolated nature of bush flying, it’s challenging to piece together a linear history of it. One may be inclined to consider it, first and foremost, a profession. But because it’s so steeped in exploration and mystique, perpetuated by stories swapped in backcountry bars and rusty-roofed cabins in the rippling foothills of mountains, it seems more appropriate to regard it as the end result of a long-lasting grassroots movement—something born out of necessity and a boldness of spirit rather than the allure of money and the need to make a living.

In the United States, about 560,000 airplanes take off and land each week—a staggering number that makes it easy to forget that aviation is only a little more than a century old. For the first few decades after Orville Wright successfully piloted the Flyer 1 with his brother Wilbur looking on in the winter of 1903, flight and aeronautics were considered to be only marginally legitimate pursuits and pilots were pariahs. Archie Satterfield, author of Alaska Bush Pilots in the Float Country, says, “Airplanes in the States were still considered a toy for daredevil barnstormers whose public image was in the same category as a carnival and circus folk.” 

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But there were notable motivations at hand that nudged flying into the public consciousness, and particularly, gave rise to some of the first bush flights. Gold was discovered near Alaska’s Klondike River in the late 1800s, which resulted in a boom in Alaska’s population. It drew not only of money fiends and gold prospectors, but also individuals with a general desire to inhabit the pristine land. By July 18th, 1922, when a World War I veteran named Roy Jones brought his open-cockpit, 180-horsepower Curtis plane (the aptly-named Northbird) to start a commercial airline service in Alaska, flight was seen as the finest method for traveling past the land’s treacherous mountains, dense forests, and unforgiving snow tundra—essentially, “the bush.” Miners were flown to different mining towns, photographers were given the chance to document Alaska’s enormous topography and tourists were given the chance to see the picturesque woodlands from the air. Jones encountered countless tribulations for the next couple of years—including individuals, unfamiliar of the new-fangled machinery of flight, walking into whirling propellers—but he proved that Alaskans benefited from having a strong-willed, jack-of-all-destinations pilot willing to navigate over the bush.