History

Excerpts from the Roseburg News-Release told the following:

MAIL PLANE CRASHES AT CANYONVILLE

A Pacific Air Transport company plane flying from Medford to Portland, crashed this morning on the summit of Canyon Mountain, 9 miles south of Canyonville, seriously injuring H.G. Donaldson, the pilot. A passenger, said to be B.P. Donovan of Los Angeles, was reported to be missing. Donaldson was brought to Roseburg in a semiconscious condition, suffering from bruises, concussion and burns, and was taken to Mercy Hospital.

The accident occurred about 10 o’clock this morning when the plane, flying at a small elevation because of low hanging clouds, was caught in shifting fog in the canyon south of Canyonville and crashed.....

Despite his serious injuries the pilot made his way to the highway, about a hundred yards away where he was picked up in a semiconscious condition. He gasped about incoherent details of the wreck before lapsing into an unconscious state. Men were immediately sent out to the scene to seek for the passenger who was supposed to have been in the ship at the time of the wreck.

Rev. H.C. Messerli, Lutheran minister at Albany, who with is wife and two children on the way home from a trip to Michigan, was nearing Pioneer Bridge from the south at the time of the wreck and heard the crash as the machine struck the hillside. He thought that a car ahead of him had hit the bridge railing, but as he came down to the bridge he heard someone calling and saw Donaldson running out of the brush.

“The flier was a mass of blood,” Rev. Messerli said. “He did not seem to be so badly cut, but the flesh of his face, hands and feet was terribly burned and swollen. He did not talk coherently, but kept muttering about the fog forcing him down. We took him to Canyonville and stopped at the drug store, and a Dr. Patterson was called to treat him. They said they would get an ambulance from Roseburg and so I came on.”

Donaldson was unable to talk after reaching Canyonville except to mutter incoherently of the wreck. A report was immediately sent into the Pacific Air Transport company and an answer received at once requested news of the passenger, D>P. Donovan of Los Angeles. This was the first information that the pilot was not alone in the ship. Men immediately hastened for the scene but spent considerable time vainly seeking the wrecked ship.

While men were searching for the wreck of the plane and passenger, people in Canyonville devoted their attention to caring for the injured pilot.

Information received from Portland was to the effect that L.G. Hubble, division superintendent of the Pacific Air Transport company, left Vancouver, Washington, for Roseburg immediately after being notified of the accident. He plans to see Donaldson at the hospital and take charge for the search for the passenger.

The place where the accident occurred is one of the worst portions of the coast airway. The mountains are high, and when there is much fog the canyons are filled with low hanging clouds that completely

obscure vision. Searchers for the wrecked plane reported to Canyonville that the fog was so dense at 1 o’clock that they had not been able to find the wreckage, and had secured no trace of the passenger, who, it was reported, might have been killed in the crash.