This Daring 1924 Flight Was a Race Against the Sun

An aviation enthusiast retraces the path of Lieutenant Russell L. Maughan’s epic flight across America.

Logan, Utah, is a quiet college town in the agricultural community of Cache Valley in northern Utah. It’s the home of Utah State University, where I did my undergraduate work in aircraft maintenance and mechanical engineering. A few years into my studies, I came across a monument on campus commemorating the “Dawn to Dusk Flight” of Russell L. Maughan—a war hero who, during aviation’s Golden Age, thrilled Americans with a daring cross-country flight completed in less than a day.

Though I had long been an aviation history enthusiast, I had never heard of the record-setting flight nor the man who flew it, so I started to delve into Maughan’s life and career. My research was enhanced by historic photos that are available online at the National Air and Space Museum’s archives, including the complete contents of Maughan’s personal scrapbook. I learned that Maughan was a Logan native and graduate of Utah State Agricultural College, which later became Utah State University. He was the grandson of Peter Maughan, a Mormon pioneer who led the settlement of Cache Valley in 1856. Russell Maughan served in World War I as a fighter pilot in the 139th Aero Squadron, where he flew a Spad XIII and is credited with four aerial victories. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for shooting down two enemy aircraft in a single mission, one of which was attacking a squadron-mate whose aircraft had been damaged. 

After the war, Lieutenant Maughan remained with the U.S. Army Air Service and participated in the Golden Age air races. He won the 1922 Pulitzer Trophy Race in a Curtiss R-6 Racer. 

Maughan’s proposed “race against the sun” was part of a broader effort on the part of the U.S. military to publicize the growing capabilities of air power and lobby Congress for support. In 1923, under the auspices of the U.S. Army Air Service, a modified Fokker T-2 became the first airplane to make a nonstop flight spanning the North American continent. A year later, the Air Service commissioned five specially-built aircraft, the Douglas World Cruisers—two of which, the New Orleans and the Chicago, successfully flew 27,553 miles around the globe in 175 days. And, in 1925, U.S. Army Lieutenant James H. Doolittle flew the Curtiss R3C-2 (a variant of Maughan’s R-6) in the Schneider Trophy Race over a straight course at a world-record speed of 245.7 mph. (The Fokker T-2, the Douglas World Cruiser Chicago, and the Curtiss R3C-2 are all in the collection of the National Air and Space Museum.)

The dawn-to-dusk flight would begin at New York’s Mitchel Field on Long Island and end at Crissy Field in San Francisco—a distance of more than 2,600 miles. Fuel and spare parts were positioned at each of the four refueling stops, which included Dayton, Ohio; St. Joseph, Missouri; Cheyenne, Wyoming; and Salduro, Utah. Maughan would be flying a Curtiss PW-8 derived from the R-6 Racer he flew in 1922 ( “P” stood for “pursuit”, and “W” specified the Curtiss D-12 engine as “water-cooled”). The Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company performed critical modifications to prepare the fighter for its transcontinental flight: They removed the aircraft’s two .30-caliber machine guns to save weight and installed additional fuel tanks, more than doubling the capacity from the standard 77 gallons to 177 gallons.

Maughan’s mission also presented a deeply personal challenge. His medical records show that he suffered intense stress during his combat flying in the Meuse-Argonne offensive, a six-week battle fought in France in World War I during which more than 26,000 U.S. soldiers were killed. After the war, he participated in the Victory Loan Flying Circus, and the many hours of aerobatic flying also caused him stress. Maughan crashed an airplane in 1919, and while he wasn’t seriously injured, he admitted to his medical officer that he “went to pieces completely as far as nerves are concerned” and for a week after “his sleep was filled with an almost constant nightmare” of reliving the crash.

Despite suffering from what would be viewed today as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Maughan showed resilience, and he entered the 1919 air race later that year, successfully flying a Spad XIII from New York to San Francisco over a number of days. In the following years, he participated in closed-circuit air races, setting official and unofficial speed records in various Curtiss racing airplanes. Despite these successes, the strains of high-performance flying would continue to visibly affect him, and his anxiety resurfaced during his efforts to race the sun.

On July 10, 1923, Maughan embarked on his first attempt. He made it to Illinois before his engine cut out and his aircraft sustained some damage upon landing in a field. He tried again on July 19, and made it all the way to Rock Springs, Wyoming, before an oil leak and his mental and physical exhaustion forced him to quit. At this point, the days were becoming too short to make another attempt, so Maughan had to wait until the next summer to try again.

At 2:59 am Eastern Standard Time (EST) on June 23, 1924, Maughan took off from Mitchel Field and flew west. At 7:10 am EST, Maughan landed at McCook Field in Dayton, Ohio. A broken fuel line caused an hour delay, during which Maughan had larger wheels fitted to the aircraft. Finally, at 8:15 am EST, Maughan took off and headed for St. Joseph, Missouri. He landed at Rosecrans Field in St. Joseph at 11:55 am EST. The field was wet from rain, so at 12:37 pm EST Maughan took off with less than a full load of fuel. The partially filled tank required him to make an additional refueling stop at 2:48 pm EST in North Platte, Nebraska. Maughan continued to Cheyenne, Wyoming, landing at 4:15 pm EST. From Cheyenne, he flew to a small railroad siding called Salduro in the salt flats west of Salt Lake City, Utah, arriving at 8:20 pm EST, and then taking off at 8:51 pm EST to begin the last leg to San Francisco. 

Maughan next passed over Crissy Field in San Francisco at 12:41 am EST (9:41 pm Pacific Standard Time, the deadline of dusk). The field was lit and, after circling a few times to ensure he had a clear landing area, Maughan touched down at 9:46 pm PST.

The total time of his trip was 21 hours, 48 minutes, and 30 seconds. Excluding delays and rest, Maughan’s total flight time was reported as 18 hours, 20 minutes. His transcontinental speed record stood for five years.

Depending on the definition of dawn and dusk (civil, nautical, astronomical), it could be argued that Maughan did not actually make the cross-country flight in daylight hours. These nuances, however, did not diminish the incredible feat of technology and endurance that Maughan had accomplished. Whereas 150 people had seen him off in Long Island, Maughan was greeted by thousands in San Francisco. His flight made the front page of newspapers throughout the nation, and he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Maughan continued to serve in the Army through the interwar years and World War II. He retired as a colonel in 1946 and died in 1958. He is buried in the Logan cemetery alongside his pioneer grandparents. 

Whenever I passed his monument on campus, I would tell friends and family about this lesser-known aviation record-setter. Last year, I realized that the 100-year anniversary of his dawn-to-dusk flight was forthcoming, and I hatched a plan to commemorate the centennial by visiting each stop of his record-breaking journey. 

Due to the logistics of commercial flights and layovers, my cross-country reenactment would take me four days instead of one. And, since some of the stops are still small towns without much air traffic, I ended up renting a car and driving the legs from Missouri to Wyoming. Although I could have easily flown direct from New York to San Francisco in six to seven hours, visiting each refueling stop allowed me to immerse myself in the history of these communities and the roles they played in the broader epic of American aviation.

Each leg of the journey had a story to tell.

Mitchel Field, Long Island, New York

“Two unsuccessful attempts in the past year had not dampened Maughan’s ardor,” wrote a journalist reporting from Mitchel Field on June 23, 1924. “Following a light breakfast, the trailblazer took to the air in his 375-horsepower single-seater plane, at one-half minute before 3 o’clock, eastern standard time. Some few clouds were in the sky, but the eastern star behind glowed as a guide, and a half-moon lit his way toward and over the Alleghenies, which he hoped to cross before full daylight. One hundred and fifty spectators watched the departure.”

The naturally flat and unforested Hempstead Plains in the middle of Long Island were the perfect place for the nascent art of flying to take root. In the early years of aviation, Long Island hosted flying meets and competitions sponsored by New York City newspaper magnates. During World War I, two airfields emerged: Roosevelt Field to the north and Hazelhurst Field to the south. Hazelhurst was later renamed Mitchel in honor of John Purroy Mitchel, a former New York City mayor who was killed in an Air Service training flight during World War I.

Hundreds of military aviators trained at Mitchel in 1917–18, and Curtiss JN-4Ds (“Jennies”) became a common sight in the skies over Long Island. Numerous aviation companies came out of Long Island, such as Grumman, Republic, Brewster, Sperry, and Vought. After his famous transatlantic solo flight, Charles Lindbergh chose Mitchel Field to start his 95-day goodwill tour on July 20, 1927. 

Both airfields have ceased operation, giving way to suburban development. However, some airfield infrastructure has been preserved, and the Cradle of Aviation Museum is situated between two historic hangars at Mitchel Field. The museum has an excellent collection of aviation artifacts related to Long Island and the many aerospace companies in the area, including a 1909 Bleriot and the world’s only full-scale mockup of the Grumman-built X-29, which was given to the museum in 2011 after spending 25 years on exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. I had reached out to the staff at Cradle of Aviation and told them about my journey, and they were excited to host me. They invited the local media to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the dawn-to-dusk flight. 

McCook Field, Dayton, Ohio

“Everything okay,” Maughan announced after his airplane landed at McCook Field at 7:10 am EST. He had covered 570 miles in three hours, 47 minutes. 

It had been a “terribly rough” flight, Maughan told reporters at the airfield. “I ran into a severe rain and windstorm. The faster I moved through it, the more [the aircraft] bobbed up and down. This irregular movement was so bad it almost made me seasick.”

Like a pit crew at a racetrack, a group of mechanics immediately converged upon the airplane. They fitted the wheels with larger tires and fixed the gas line. Lieutenant Harold Harris, the chief pilot at McCook Field who supervised the repairs, said that if the weakened connection had not been discovered, Maughan’s third attempt to race the sun would have failed. “It would have certainly let go somewhere along the route, and none of the other scheduled stops are equipped with materials to make such fitting,” Harris told reporters.

As the mechanics rushed to repair the Curtiss, Maughan relentlessly paced, but remained silent. Finally, at 8:45 am EST, he took off on the next leg of the trip.

I arrived at McCook Field a century later, after flying from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Dayton International. Operated by the Army Air Service from 1917 to 1927, McCook Field is situated north of Dayton, next to the Great Miami River. 

The site is now an industrial area and public park, where I found a historical marker, which reads: “McCook Field was established as a research and development facility of the U.S. Army Signal Corps Aviation Section, 18 October 1917.This Dayton site, favorably located within the U.S. industrial complex, became the aviation engineering and development station and proving ground with the entry of World War I. It was the ‘Cradle of Aviation’ for ten years. As airplanes became faster and heavier, a huge sign warned aviators, ‘This field is small use it all,’ and soon the 254-acre McCook Field became inadequate.”

Dayton was home to Wilbur and Orville Wright, who researched, built, and perfected the first practical airplane in their bicycle shops. As such, the city is brimming with historic sites that beckoned me to visit, including the Wright Cycle Company Complex and Huffman Prairie, where the Wright brothers truly learned to fly after their first successful hops at Kitty Hawk. 

Located six miles northeast of Dayton is Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and the National Museum of the United States Air Force, the oldest and largest military aviation museum in the world. Some artifacts of note are a Spad XIII (the type flown by Maughan in World War I) and the Focke-Wulf Fw 190D interceptor—considered by many German pilots to be the finest piston-powered fighter in the Luftwaffe—which is on loan from the Smithsonian.

After a day in Dayton, I flew commercially from Dayton International to Kansas City International (with a layover in Atlanta) and drove the 30 or so miles to St. Joseph, Missouri.

Rosecrans Field, St. Joseph, Missouri 

After flying 565 miles in three hours, 40 minutes, Maughan landed in Missouri at 11:55 am EST.

“The little Curtiss pursuit plane swooped down from the sky with the speed of a hummingbird,” wrote a reporter at Rosecrans Field. “A great cheer arose from the crowd of spectators as a tall, solemn bronze-faced man slipped from the cockpit, gave a few short sharp orders to machinicians before turning to an auto which rushed up carrying refreshments.” Maughan ate a meal of cold chicken and a glass of milk and was back in the air at 12:37 pm EST.

The St. Joseph Airport is named after Guy Rosecrans, a St. Joseph resident who served as an airman in World War I and died after being injured while hand-propping an airplane. The original Rosecrans Field was at the site of a theme park called Lake Contrary. The airfield was later relocated to a site along Waterworks Road and finally moved to its current location. 

The airport is also home to the Rosecrans Air National Guard Base and the 139th Airlift Wing, which was created in 1962 and operates C-130 Hercules transports. Every year, 500 to 1,000 students from the U.S. and allied countries such as Norway and Japan come to the base to attend a course at its Advanced Airlift Tactics Training Center. 

Maughan’s 1924 flight sought to call attention to military preparedness, and in that spirit the Training Center was established in 1983 to address performance deficiencies. It now serves as a clearinghouse for gathering and disseminating airlift tactics information. 

After departing St. Joseph, I drove to Nebraska.

North Platte Field, Nebraska 

North Platte was not one of Maughan’s planned refueling stops, but due to the wet field at St. Joseph, he was unable to take off with a full tank. He landed at 2:48 pm EST after flying 325 miles and hopped back into the air soon after.

The airfield at North Platte was established in 1921 as a hub for transcontinental airmail. The location, near a river and train tracks, was ideal for early pilots who relied on such landmarks to help guide them from city to city. In 1922, the airfield was lit with burning fuel barrels to facilitate the first nighttime airmail flight. A regional airport is still there, named after Lee Bird, a local World War I pilot who died during training. 

From North Platte, Nebraska, I drove to Wyoming.

Cheyenne, Wyoming

Maughan arrived in Cheyenne at 4:15 pm EST, with two-thirds of his trip behind him, having flown 1,680 miles.

“Maughan said as he approached Cheyenne he experienced a recurrence of the nausea from protracted nervous strain which caused him to collapse here last year,” wrote a reporter at the scene.  “He quickly became normal after alighting with his shop and chatted with friends from Fort D.A. Russel while his plane was being inspected and refueled.” 

While there, the local Frontier Days Committee presented him with a “four-gallon” sombrero and he posed for a photo while wearing it (sadly, there is no record of this image). He then took off from Cheyenne at 4:56 pm EST.

Like North Platte, Cheyenne was an important hub along the transcontinental airmail route. Today, 70-foot-long concrete arrows that were constructed to guide airmail pilots can still be found across the arid scrubland of southern Wyoming. Later, a system of rotating beacons were constructed on top of towers along the route, every 10 miles between Chicago and Cheyenne. 

When Maughan stopped here in 1924, it would be another two years before Robert Goddard launched the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket. Today, Cheyenne is famously the location of the F.E. Warren Air Force Base, which is home to the 90th Missile Wing, which operates Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. The base is also the headquarters for the 20th Air Force, responsible for the nation’s ICBM force. The Wyoming Air National Guard base is also  located in Cheyenne, adjacent to the west side of the city.

From Cheyenne I drove to Denver International Airport and then flew to Salt Lake International to visit Maughan’s last refueling stop.

Salduro, Utah

Maughan arrived at Salduro at 8:20 pm EST after flying 480 miles.“He spent half an hour drinking a cup of coffee, going over his plane, which appeared in good order, and taking on fuel,” wrote a reporter in Utah. Maughan took off at 8:51 pm EST.

Salduro was a railroad siding used by several failed mining companies. It also occasionally served as a landing field for airmail pilots and air racers. A small camp of support staff, friends, and family awaited Maughan’s arrival. He was able to see his wife during this final stop, and a century later, my wife and child joined me for the drive from Salt Lake International Airport to Salduro, which is near an interstate rest stop. 

From Salduro I drove back to Salt Lake International to catch a flight for the final leg of my trip.

Crissy Field, California

Crissy Field was a U.S. Army airfield until it closed in 1974. In 1994, the Presidio ceased military operations and was transferred to the National Park Service. After restorations, Crissy Field was reopened as a public recreation area and is a popular spot for viewing the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels when they take to the skies over San Francisco during Fleet Week.

A century ago, Crissy Field witnessed a celebration that one newspaper described as “without parallel in the history of local aviation events.”

“Lieut. Russell L. Maughan, army flyer, successfully completed his daylight-to-dusk flight from New York to San Francisco when he landed at Crissy Field,” wrote a reporter on the scene. “Apparently almost overcome with emotion and jubilant at the victory which he had achieved, Lieutenant Maughan seemed unable to speak when his plane came to a stop. His face bore a serious and drawn expression. He was lifted bodily from the cockpit by his cheering comrades of the air service and carried on their shoulders through the swirling crowd to a rear door of the army headquarters.”

Maughan landed in San Francisco at 9:46 pm PST, one minute before dusk. After landing, he was handed a message from President Calvin Coolidge. It read: “In the name of the American people, I thank you. We are proud of you.”   

Nathan Hoch is a graduate student conducting aerospace engineering research at Utah State University’s AeroLab, which develops software for aerodynamic design, analysis, and optimization.

This article, originally titled "Dawn to Dusk," is from the Fall 2025 issue of Air & Space Quarterly, the National Air and Space Museum's signature magazine that explores topics in aviation and space, from the earliest moments of flight to today. Explore the full issue.

Want to receive ad-free hard copies of Air & Space Quarterly? Join the Museum's National Air and Space Society to subscribe.