The Harriman Airplane

A bit more today about the life of the Harrimans at Railroad Ranch, which they eventually donated to the State of Idaho to Create Harriman State Park.

In the late 1940s, Roland and Gladys Harriman took a new twist on their visits to the Railroad Ranch in Island Park.  Roland, the Union Pacific Railroad baron, and four of his friends commissioned the first five Grumman Goose airplanes. These amphibious aircraft, each powered by twin 450-horsepower engines mounted on the leading edge of their wings, could land about anywhere. The landing gear was hand-cranked into position for field landing. The field often landed in was a hay pasture near the Henrys Fork of the Snake River as it flowed through the ranch.

This shot of the plane was taken in 1938 on a hunting trip the Harriman family took to British Columbia.

Roland didn't fly the plane himself. He commissioned a pilot whenever he wanted to go somewhere. That's one of the pilots, name unknown, sitting on the rail of a ranch jack fence with ranch hands Don Kroker (center) and Harold Hanstead (right) with the plane parked behind them. 

The video above was taken in 1938 or 1939 at the Railroad Ranch, showing the Grumman Goose landing.  Harriman turned his airplane over to the Royal Canadian Air Force for the war effort in World War II. The US wasn't yet in the war. The Goose was sold to Central BC Airways after the war and, in 1952, crashed and sank during bad weather north of Butedale, British Columbia, with five fatalities.