Harvey W. "Barney" Barnhill was a pioneer Alaskan bush pilot who was honored by the Alaska Centennial Commission in 1967. He was born about 1902 in Ohio, and learned to fly in 1920 as a recruit at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Illinois. He came to Alaska in 1929, and was part of Carl Ben Eielson’s team in Fairbanks transporting personnel and a fortune in furs from the trading ship Nanuck that was stranded in the ice off the coast of Siberia. He also flew in the search for the Eielson wreck after his fatal crash in the winter of 1929-1930. Barney and Linious "Mac" McGee went to San Francisco in 1931 and purchased a three-seat Stinson aircraft NC216W from Varney Air Lines. They shipped the plane to Alaska on a steamship, taking it off the ship in Valdez. They reassembled the airplane on the beach and flew it to Anchorage where they formed Barnhill & McGee Airways, one of the earliest airlines in Anchorage. They flew charter trips out of Anchorag and flew McGee on many fur-buying trips throughout Alaska. Barnhill and McGee dissolved their partnership in about 1932 and McGee purchased an additional Stinson and founded McGee Airways, which was a forerunner of Alaska Airlines. Barney returned to the States and died in a car wreck in Spokane, Washington in the late 1950’s.
References
edit- Anchorage Centennial Commission Aviation Committee, “Honoring 100 ALASKA BUSH PILOTS”. Anchorage, Alaska, June 24, 1967
- Archie Satterfield, “The Alaska Airlines Story”. Alaska Northwest Publishing Company, Anchorage, Alaska, 1981. ISBN 0-88240-165-3
- John P. Bagoy, “Legends & Legacies, Anchorage 1910-1935”. 2001, ISBN 1-888125-91-8
- “1910 United States Census of Ohio”
- “1920 United States Census of Illinois”
- “1930 United States Census of Alaska”