One hundred years ago on Sunday, June 13, 1926, Roman Warren, known as the Cowboy Aviator, performed a daring feat under the Mission Bridge over the Santa Ana River at the base of Mount Rubidoux. Recorded in photographs and in film, the bold flight has come to be part of Riverside’s aviation lore.
An early barnstorming pilot, Roman Warren, first made an emergency landing on an early field in Pennsylvania Avenue and Chicago Avenue in July of either 1922 or 1923, when he ran out of gas on a flight from Arizona to Los Angeles. Roman soon relocated to the area, and when the City of Riverside established the Riverside Airport (today’s Flabob, not the Riverside Municipal Airport), he became its manager.
However, times were tough for many early pilots. Roman complained that he did not have enough money to even buy a hamburger. In a later interview, he reminisced, “In those days, you had to fly under a smaller bridge or over a bigger ocean to make a living, and my specialty was small bridges.”
Warren decided that in order to draw attention to his flying, he would fly under the center span of the Santa Ana River Mission Bridge. The opening was only 16 feet high. The record at the time was set by a pilot who had flown under a 37-foot-high bridge. The newspapers generated interest in the event beforehand and announced that skeptics were wagering on whether the feat was possible…