"Bug" station scene of Ag-aviation beginnings
Modified from August 14, 1975 Centennial Edition Madison Journal

 

 

A Mexican emigrant crossed the Rio Grande into southern Texas in 1892. The land he found was lonely, friendless, the natives inhospitable to an indigent illegal alien. But, like so many impoverished foreigners who came to this country to begin a new life, he found a rich new land "flowing with milk and honey," at least to him. He was, like the "sons of Anak" already inhabiting the land, in cotton, so to speak.

 

He was a boll weevil. You could not find a more vigorous, enterprising young immigrant. His beginnings were humble, certainly, but he worked hard and had many, many children. His descendents scattered across the south; wherever there was a cotton crop, there their duty lay.

 

They were not greedy, certainly not, but they taught their children not to be wasteful. When they did something, they believed in doing it right.

 

Meanwhile, the sons of Anak began to get worried.

 

The boll weevil and Madison Parish—it was a marriage made in heaven. Madison had a lot of nice cotton, certainly, but it had much more. Fifty per cent of its land was not cultivated, which meant that the boll weevil had plenty of room to hibernate during the winter months. The climate and environment were per­fect—the boll weevil could feast in comfort.

 

But before the boll weevil came to Madison, the Federal Bureau of Entomology was at work in Texas trying to come to grips with the growing problem. They soon learned that it would not be easy. The weevil had no natural enemies; furthermore, it could produce several generations of weevils in a single season.

 

The entomologists needed a place to work where climate and crop conditions were as favorable to the weevil as in any other area in the South. They found such a place in the delta land of Northeast Louisiana. There was plenty of cotton and plenty of boll weevils in Madison Parish.

 

The Delta Laboratory of the Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Entomology came to Tallulah in 1909. It set up shop in an old school building on the corner of South Chestnut and East Scott Streets, where the current school board building is located. A Mr. Cushing was its first director. The purpose of the laboratory was to make experiments in an effort to find an effective means of combating the boll weevils.

 

To the cotton farmers of Madison Parish, the station didn't come a day too soon. They had found the first holes in their cotton buds in 1907, showing that the boll weevil had arrived in their territory. The next year, the cotton farmers produced 60 percent less cotton than they were accustomed to producing, and they were faced with ruin.

 

Cotton lands were aban­doned and negro labor was forced to leave the plantations for lack of work. The farmers of Madison Parish had been told for years to diversify their crops, but hadn't done so. Now, faced with complete destruction of cotton as a major crop, it seemed to many farmers that nothing else could be done. They turned their attention to the growing of rice, corn, oats, and alfalfa.

 

Across the South, many farmers were turning to crop diversification, and were using some of their lands for raising cattle, hogs, and chickens. They became more prosperous than when they raised only cotton. After the destruction of the 1916 cotton crop forced planters around Enterprise, Ala. to turn to peanut farming, they erected a monument to the boll weevil in the Middle of Enterprise. The inscription on it reads, "In profound appreciation of the boll weevil, and what it has done to herald prosperity."

 

But Madisonians have a long tradition of stubbornness which has helped them progress and gotten them in trouble in about equal measure. The majority of planters refused to diversify their crops. They had always grown cotton. They would continue to grow cotton. No doubt many reasoned that, with such a fine laboratory right in Tallulah, it would only be a matter of time before the boll weevil was licked.

 

But it was completely new field; every theory and in­vention had to be tried out, and many were flat failures, G. D. Smith, who succeeded Mr. Cushing as director of the laboratory, believed that all the boll weevils came out of hibernation before cotton started fruiting, and could be destroyed if all of their food was removed then.

 

The weevils' food was the cotton squares, or buds, so during that period Smith published editorials in the Madison Journal urging the planters to send their labor into the fields and pick cotton squares.

 

Smith's plan failed because many boll weevils did not come out of hibernation until the middle of July. Smith was transferred to Florida around 1916 and continued to push this method which came to be known as the Florida method. He was succeeded by B.R. Coad, who began developing machinery and using poisons to fight the weevils. Coad brought chemists and engineers as well as en­tomologists to Tallulah. Gradually they began to find ways to kill boll weevils without killing the cotton plants.

 

Some farmers distrusted the new machines, and especially the poisons. They became suckers for en­trepreneurs and quacks with "sure-fire" ways to kill boll weevils

 

One man in Georgia ad­vertised that for a dollar he would send a device guaranteed to kill boll weevils. What he sent was a tiny hammer and anvil, with instructions on where to place the weevil.

 

Some companies operated totally within state boundaries to avoid federal prosecution. They would come to an area selling "weevil killer," which contained a secret ingredient (molasses, etc.) that did nothing to boll weevils. A couple years later they would return and sell the same product under a different name. Also sold to gullible farmers was a weevil remover which the Delta Laboratory proved was worthless.

 

After hundreds of ex­periments the laboratory concluded that the only way to control boll weevils was by the use of poisons. The en­tomologists tried London Purple, which they found wouldn't kill weevils; Paris Green, which killed some weevils, but injured the cotton plant, and lead arsenate, which had been used to kill apple moths.

 

Finally lead arsenate was replaced by calcium arsenate, another arsenic mixture, which was so powerful and long-lasting that the fields it was used on had to be plowed under after the cotton was picked to keep it from killing farm animals. Nicotine sulfate was later added to the calcium arsenate to prevent aphid buildup.

 

The use of poisons has always been a complex matter because the killing of one insect may allow another type of insect to take over the plant. For this reason a variety of chlorinated hydrocarbons and phosphate compounds is used to control the various types of pests which may attack a crop.

 

Just as important as the poisons were the machines used to spread the mixture. Here again, the Tallulah laboratory tried out various contraptions, some of which were never used. Dusters were invented for hand use, some to be carried on the backs of mules like saddles, or carried by men on horseback; there were dusters powered by gasoline engines, hand cranks, bellows, or by their own moving wheels as they were hauled by a horse or mule team.

 

Some of the machines in­vented at the Tallulah station are still in production. But though they were useful and effective for small farms, something still was needed to dust quickly and on a large scale.

 

Limited experiments had been conducted in Ohio on aerial dusting of Catalpa trees in an attempt to control the Catalpa Sphinx. Director Coad was quick to grasp the possibilities of using airplanes in his own program. He asked the Army Air Service for equipment and personnel, and chose a 100-acre plot of ground three miles from Tallulah for a landing field.

 

On this tract of land, which was on the Shirley Plantation, then owned by the estate of William M. Scott, was built the first municipal airport in Louisiana.

 

Construction of "Scott Field" and the equip­ment for it cost over $100,000. The parish contributed a small portion for grading and drainage.

 

The airport had a hangar with space for eight planes, machine shops, storage buildings for fuel and poison, and a weather observatory which was one of 79 such weather stations in the U. S. and Canada. A Standard Zenith airway beacon on a 51 foot tower, revolving six times every minute, could be seen al a distance of 45 miles.

 

The old service station and administration building presently at the airport was built by the Standard Oil Company in 1930. According to a January, 1930 Madison Journal it contained "the most modern electrical equipment a full-time mechanic, and the last word in airplane servicing." It was intended to provide passenger service facilities, but the field was closed shortly afterward.

 

THE AIRPLANES

 

The Army Air Service sent two "Jennies" and six men from the Army air depot at Montgomery. The Jennies proved to be inadequate, and in 1923 three DeHaviland 4-B's and necessary personnel were sent to the field.

 

The DeHaviland was the mainstay of the military, being America's prominent fighting plane in World War I. It was a two-hole biplane with a 400 hp, V-12 Liberty engine. In an article in the November, 1972 Private Pilot, Alan L. Morse, an aeronautical engineer assigned to the program in 1923, described her thus:

"She wore her military insignia proudly, but other­wise was a sorry sight. Her stick-plywood fuselage had been chopped away to ac­commodate the hopper, air scoops stuck out on top and a six-foot tunnel arrangement was strapped underneath. She was plastered with powdered calcium arsenate and her elevators drooped dejectedly. But, she hadn't quite; she was in there doing her job.

 

"As I watched, a three-man crew prepared to swing the prop. Numbers one and three faced the airplane while number two, in the middle, faced away. Then each man grasped his neighbor's wrist and they were ready. Number one then pulled the prop down and through and, as 400 horses came to life, the other two jerked him clear of the whirling blades. The Liberty had no starter. Then the DH wobbled away to the end of the field, headed into the wind and took off out over the trees. She was bad news for the boll weevil."

 

Bad news, too, were the men sent to fly it. They had learned how to fly by fighting Germans in fierce air battles. Now, just as much was required of them in the low-level flying of crop dusting.

 

And with no precedent or former experience to go by, there was much to be learned. The first experiments were performed simply by throwing dust overboard and noting its action in the air. Later a lever-operated hopper was developed. Airscoops were used to put air pressure on top of the powder to push it out of the tunnel, or venturi, un­derneath the airplane.

 

It had been learned in ex­periments with ground equipment that calcium ar­senate had to be continually agitated to be manageable, and in the air it was no exception. The powder would bridge just above the exit, resulting in a very anemic dust cloud. Then the bridge would collapse and a great puff would all but smother the cotton plants. Various agitating devices were flight tested, including rotating paddles and sword-like blades that swept back and forth like windshield wipers across the sloping bottom of the hopper.

 

The old DH's went through many alterations as one idea after another was tested in the air. Brainstorms sprouted into tinware to be later in­corporated into the first commercial duster, built by the Huff Daland Company in 1924 under Department of Agriculture specifications.

 

But before the duster could be commercially used, other questions had to be answered by the Army pilots: Could dusting be done while the ground mists lay on the fields? Could a pilot flying above the mist level orient himself in relation to the field? At what altitude and speed should he fly to best discharge the dust into the cotton: what patterns of flying would be required to do the job best? Could an airplane stand up under the excessive wear on its engines that daily dusting flights would inflict?

 

Answering these questions was as hair-raising a job as shooting down a German Fokker over St. Mihiel. Acrobatics at 50 feet and within the contours of a cotton patch is rugged business, as any modern-day dusting pilot will tell you. With the weak engines and slow maneuverability of those World War I planes, it was even more difficult and dangerous.

 

The Army pilots were up to the challenge. They used to prove it by running the lan­ding gear of their jennies across the roofs of the tenant cabins on the Scott's plan­tation.

 

One pilot was told that he had leukemia, which back then was an untreatable disease. Realizing he would be grounded as soon as his superiors learned of his condition, he decided to fulfill a long-time wish to fly down Washington Street    in Vicksburg. The street being narrow with tall buildings on each side, the pilot flew his DH sideways, just above the streetcar cable.

 

All of the employees of the Delta Lab were loved and respected in the community; some made permanent homes in the parish. Lt. John B. Patrick married Arwin Scott, and hosted during this period important future figures in the world of aviation, such as Vandenburg, Doolittle and Arnold. The aviators loved the fine hunting in Madison Parish and frequented Mike Morrisey's Windmill Club at Delta.

 

Mrs. Francis Robinson vividly remembers being taken for airplane rides by the friendly pilots as a young girl. Of course when government officials heard that children were riding in the dusters they quickly put a stop to the practice. Anyone who went up in the planes had to sign an agreement releasing the government from any responsibility should an ac­cident occur. It is a tribute to their skill and care in flying that, though there were many forced landings, there was not one serious accident involving a military or government pilot in the whole program.

 

The Delta Lab did not confine its work to crop-dusting. All through this period it continued to develop dusting machines for ground use. Dr. Coad, William McConnell and Lionel Jones are credited with borrowing aerial photography from war ex­periences and applying it to agricultural estimates of crops in cultivation. The lab also pioneered in using air­planes to rout the malarial mosquito.

 

FIRST DUSTING COMPANY

 

The Huff Daland Company, a New York-based airplane manufacturer, formed a separate crop dusting division called Huff Daland Dusters. Its headquarters, first located in Macon, Ga., were later moved to Monroe. C. E. Woolman, a farm agent who had been assisting Dr. Coad at the Tallulah boll weevil station, joined the division as vice president and field manager.

 

In a few years the Monroe company had accumulated the largest fleet of privately-owned aircraft in the world. Then in 1928 Woolman returned to Monroe from dusting operations in Peru to find that his parent company was trying to sell Huff Daland Dusters out from under him. He aroused the interest of a group of Monroe businessmen who bought out Huff Daland's dusting division.

 

They renamed the company Delta Air Service after the Mississippi Delta it served. The next year it initiated passenger service between Dallas and Jackson, and grew into the present company, Delta Air Lines. It is believed locally that the huge airline began at Scott Airport, but that is not true. But employees at the experimental station were influential in the company's beginnings.

 

The first commercial dusting company at Tallulah was established in 1925. The Southern Dusting Co. was organized by Eugene Stevens, Arthur C. Gray, pilots, with Jack and Marmaduke McCaffrey owning most of the stock. The company was marred by fatalities and terminated in 1929, when general manager Stevens went into the army.

 

During this period it was a practice of the agricultural aviation trade to go into an area and contract for large blocks of acreage in order to reduce the expense of aerial application and make the venture economically feasible.

 

The Southern Field Crop Insect Division was broken up in 1925 following the death of its director, Dr. W.D. Hunter, and the Division of Cotton Insect Investigation was created, with headquarters at Tallulah. Some years the division hired more than 100 people to work in the cotton fields around Tallulah. It was known around the world and was yearly visited by prominent entomologists.

 

The bulletins it issued were followed by the cotton in­terests of the whole country. To handle the increased output, the division rented office space at the present site of Phil's grocery, while retaining its offices at the old school building and at Scott Airport.

 

The old service station and administration building presently at the airport was erected by the Standard Oil Company in 1930. According to a January, 1930 Madison Journal, it contained "the most modern electrical equipment, a full-time mechanic, and the last word in airplane servicing."

 

B. R. Coad left the Depart­ment of Agriculture in 1931 and was replaced by R. W. Harned. In that same year the headquarters of the Division of Cotton Insect Investigation were moved to Washington.

 

The use of Scott Field was discontinued by the Delta Lab, which lost its Airplane, Chemistry, Photography, and Mechanical Engineering Departments. It retained only its Entomological Research Department under the direction of R. C. Gaines. It moved in 1934 to buildings a mile and a half south of Tallulah. There it remained until its dissolution in 1973, which was due to reorganization and cur­tailment of certain phases of the U.S. D.A.'s activities.

 

Tallulah Airport was unused until 1938 when Cecil Smith and Jimmy Yeates bought the property and formed the Smith and Yeates Dusting Co. They offered flying instruction in addition to crop dusting services. The company suspended its operations in 1942.

 

During World War II, the airport served as a practice field and cross-country reference point for Army Air Corps trainees from the base at Greenville, Miss.

 

Jimmy Yeates returned after the war and operated Yeates Flying Service for a year, then sold it to R. N. Graves in 1946. Graves ran the Little Southern Dusting Co. in partnership with Carol Presley in 1946. He became sole owner in 1947 and changed the name to Graves Flying Service.

 

The runway was unpaved until 1967, when Robert Graves donated the land to the Police Jury in a 50-year lease. The Jury, intending to use the land as a municipal airport, received funds from the Department of Public Works to blacktop the runway and put in lights. An air show and ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrated the opening of the 3,000 foot lighted runway in November, 1969.

 

The Police Jury subleased the runway back to Graves in 1970, giving him the exclusive right to operate a flying service on the property. The runway is still open for public use, and Graves cuts the grass, repairs lights and does other maintenance on the facility.

 

Graves Flying Service does all types of air work on farms, including dropping pesticides and herbicides. His planes (he uses Stearman dusters) fertilize fields, seed soybean, wheat and rice crops, and drop desiccants--drying agents which dry up the sap in weeds making them easier to cut. Graves once operated an air ambulance service.

 

Of course the primary function of the airport in the past has been to serve agriculture, but it soon may add passenger transportation to its services. Benny Mays is in the process of setting up a charter air taxi service and is fixing up the old service station. Mays teaches flying every day from four until dark and on weekends.

 

POSTSCRIPT-‑

The agricultural aviation and Chemical insecticide industries, both of which were born at Tallulah, are multi­million dollar businesses today, employing tens of thousands of agplanes and pilots. Yet the boll weevil still runs up to a quarter of a billion dollars of losses every year. Over one-third of all agricultural insecticides used in the entire U.S.A. is used to control the furry insect