Happy 100th birthday to the Goodyear Blimp! While Angelenos have watched blimps float across the Los Angeles sky since the famous 1910 Air Meet, the Goodyear Company celebrates June 3, 1925 as the centennial because that’s when The Pilgrim — “a true blimp” — first took flight (via NPR).
Ten years after that first Air Meet at Dominguez Rancho, Goodyear premiered its baby blimp, The Pony, first in San Francisco and then in Los Angeles. That summer of 1920, the Pony floated over Arcadia’s Ross Field, Lincoln Heights and docked at an aeronautical celebration at Venice Municipal Field.
These baby blimp flights over Los Angeles coincided with the opening of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company on South Central Avenue in June 1920. Goodyear was the first company to build a large tire and rubber factory on the West Coast (and in Los Angeles). By the late 1920s, B. F. Goodrich Tire Factory (1928), Firestone Tire and Rubber Plant (1928), Samson Tire & Rubber Company (1929) followed suit. With these four tire factories, Los Angeles became the second largest rubber manufacturing center in the US.
As part of company’s PR campaign, the Pony blimp delivered the first tires produced at the factory to Douglas Fairbanks at his Beverly Hills estate. Apparently the famous actor and his new wife Mary Pickford were having breakfast on the porch when a crew of men suddenly drove up to announce the baby blimp would be delivering Fairbanks’ new tires that morning.
I have to admire Goodyear’s publicity team who crafted this impressive PR stunt — delivering the factory’s first tires to Hollywood’s biggest star via a midget dirigible that landed in a Beverly Hills front yard definitely made headlines. Plus, the blimp probably caught the attention of every Angeleno in its path that morning (planes and airships were not crowding the skies back in 1920).
One of my favorite stories about the Goodyear blimps involves the role its Volunteer played in the history of city planning. In 1929, Los Angeles city planners boarded Goodyear’s Volunteer blimp for a “bird’s eye view” of the city as they developed plans for the Civic Center. The Los Angeles Times reported that this was the first time the Goodyear Blimp had been used for such city planning efforts. When I interviewed Los Angeles historian Meredith Drake Reitan about LA’s early planning practices (see below), she explained that planning historian Mel Scott has suggested Los Angeles was the first city to use aerial photographs in city planning. Would’ve loved to have heard the discussion among city planners once they landed at the Goodyear Air Field next to the factory in South LA.
I have a soft spot for this factory (now a large USPS facility) because my grandma worked here during World War II. I learned this when interviewing my grandma’s younger sister (my great aunt) who reminisced about their old neighborhood near Edison Middle School. Apparently, my grandma walked to work and my great-grandfather would meet her on the walk home from the factory. It was in this moment that my great aunt spoke briefly about living in the shadow of the Goodyear Blimp.
Ever since hearing this nugget of a blimp story, I’ve been on the lookout for memories related to the blimp and South LA’s Goodyear Tire Factory. At some history event, I even recorded a random older gentleman from this same neighborhood, reminiscing about the airship.
Most of my focus has been on the blimp memories of my grandma’s generation, but I just realized my dad had is own soft spot for the airship. While recently thumbing through some of his papers, I found his sketch of the Goodyear Blimp. He enjoyed drawing and sketching, so I didn’t think much of it. But a core memory was unlocked this week when I took another look at his drawing while researching the Goodyear Blimp centennial.
Long long…long ago, my dad had also made a miniature version of the Goodyear Blimp from some model kit that he bought. This plastic baby blimp sat prominently atop our kitchen bookcase — with electric lights blinking text messages. Fortunately, I found a photo of this miniature airship in our kitchen to verify that my little-kid memory wasn’t just a dream.
He would’ve been a little boy when his family lived in the neighborhood of the Goodyear factory. To a young kid, seeing this larger-than-life airship take flight so close to home must’ve left a big impression. Surely, the blimp’s shadow would’ve crossed over his playground/his front yard as he heard the mechanical hum fill the air.
You know, my dad has been gone a very long time so I’ve long accepted the fact that any stories about him are going to come second-hand. But in this moment, I deeply yearned to know his thoughts about this factory and its blimp. It feels silly to fixate on the Goodyear Blimp when there are so many other bigger stories about him and his Los Angeles life that I’ve always wanted to know.
Sadly, we don’t have many archival breadcrumbs on these other broader topics in our family archives. Yet these few blimp morsels are enough for me to savor an image of my dad as a young Mexican American kid in South Los Angeles in awe of his own neighborhood’s flying machine.
Victoria Bernal 
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