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Laura Ingalls

Laura Ingalls

Laura Ingalls

Laura Houghtaling Ingalls
(1901-1967)

In October 1930 Laura Ingalls, flying in a DeHavilland Moth biplane, became the first woman to make a solo transcontinental flight across the United States. Ingalls took off from Roosevelt Field, New York, on October 5, made nine stops along the way, and landed in Glendale, California, on October 9. Her east-to-west flight took 30 hours and 27 minutes.

Ingalls held more U.S. transcontinental air records during the 1930s than any other woman. Her most well-known flights were made in 1934 and earned her the Harmon Trophy as the most outstanding female aviator of the year.

She flew a Lockheed Orion from Mexico to Chile, over the Andes Mountains to Brazil, north to Cuba and then on to New York, marking the first flight over the Andes by an American woman, the first solo flight around South America in a landplane, the first flight by a woman from North America to South America, and establishing a woman's distance record of 17,000 miles. In 1936, she placed second behind Louise Thaden in the Bendix Trophy Race.