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It looks like the only way you can get any publicity on your death is to be killed in a plane. It’s no novelty to be killed in an auto anymore.” Will Rogers had the knack to turn anything into a joke and get away with it. Part Cherokee, Rogers took his lariat tricks from Indian territory in Oklahoma to Broadway, where his shy grin and classic drawl – “All I know is what I read in the paper” – made him the most popular folk hero of his time. He wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column starting in 1926 and would file it six times a week no matter where he happened to be – which was likely to be anywhere in the world.
In August 1935, Rogers happened to be in Alaska, casually flying around the territory with Wiley Post, a famous globetrotting aviator. “Was you ever driving around in a car and not knowing or caring where you went?” Rogers wrote in his column August 12. “Well, that’s what Wiley and I are doing. We sure are having a great time. If we hear of whales or polar bears in the Arctic, or a big heard of caribou or reindeer, we fly over and see it.” The two men had plans to fly over the Arctic to Siberia and on to Moscow to explore the possibility of making it a regular air route. But they kept their mission secret.
The two men took off from Fairbanks on August 15 for a 500-mile trip to Point Barrow, a barren outpost at the northern tip of Alaska. During the flight Post noticed the plane was heavy in front and had a tendency to pitch forward at low speeds.
There immediate concern on August 15 was the weather. They had been warned of dense fog along their route but Post just said, “I think we might as well go anyway.” Rogers agreed and pointed out, “There’s lots of lakes we can land on.” About 50 miles from Point Barrow the fog got bad enough that Post did indeed land but, unsure of their route, they landed on a shallow river 15 miles from Point Barrow to ask directions from some Eskimos.
At 5 p.m. they took off, again. About 50 feet in the air, before they had even reached the end of the water, the engine sputtered. Post turned sharply to the right, then the plane plunged nose-first into the edge of the stream into about two feet of water. The right wing was torn off and the plane came to a rest upside down. Both men were killed instantly. Post was crushed by the engine, which had been forced back into the cockpit. Rogers was also killed by the impact, thought he had been seated farther back in the plan, probably to try to counterbalance the front-end heaviness. It was unclear why the engine misfired, but some have speculated that the plane was out of gas.
After the crash an Eskimo who had given them directions ran 15 miles to Point Barrow to report what he had seen. It took him three hours. It was dark by the time a U.S. Army sergeant set out in a whale boat through the icy waters. He towed the bodies back to Barrow in a skin boat.
Will Rogers was buried in his hometown of Claremore, Oklahoma.
To learn more about the death of legendary characters read Tales Behind the Tombstones: The Deaths and Burials of some of the West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Western Actors and Lawmen.
