John J. Montgomery

The earliest recorded efforts at aviation in San Diego were with John J. Montgomery. Montgomery grew-up in the San Francisco / Santa Clara area where he studied physics at Santa Clara College. His father owned a large tract of land in San Diego at the south end of the bay and planted it in fruit trees. John Montgomery and his brother Richard moved to San Diego to manage the farm and experiment on his concepts for flying. Later the rest of the family joined them and the farm was about where the Swiss Park is located today, near what was the La Punta Salt Works. The neighborhood along the bay at the Main Street exit of the Montgomery Freeway (US-5) is still known as Fruitdale and in the 1880s, when Montgomery was performing his experiments in flying, the region was full of farms like Montgomery’s, with the only other employment in the area being with produce packing plants and the salt works. The historic salt works is still there, but most of the structures around it, including the Montgomery Farm, were washed away in the great flood of 1916 when the Otay Dam broke. In addition to the I-5 freeway, there is an elementary school in Chula Vista, a middle-school in El Cajon, and a middle-school and high-school in San Diego all named after John Montgomery; as well as the Montgomery-Gibbs Airport on the northeast side of San Diego. The Montgomery-Waller Park near the hills that Montgomery flew from has the large memorial monument. The monument features a 93-foot high stainless steel static test wing from the Consolidated B-32 Dominator mounted upright that is visible from the Montgomery freeway. It is sometimes referred to as the “Silver Wing” and Silver Wing Elementary School which overlooks the monument, is named for it. Probably the best researched and well-written book on John Montgomery is “Quest for Flight: John J. Montgomery and the Dawn of Aviation in the West” (C. Harwood and G. Fogel, University of Oklahoma Press, 26 October 2012).