Aviation in Northern California 1910-1939: Aviation in Northern California

Born in Marysville and raised in North Sacramento, Allen Herr attended primary and Norte Del Rio High School developing his talent playing French horn. In 1963, at age 18, he was hired by the Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra to play horn. A year later, the Sacramento Light Opera Co. (Music Circus) hired him for the pit orchestra of its summer stock productions. He joined the William Land Park Band, Forrey Long's Dance Orchestra, John Nelson's Big Band, and (his favorite) a Dixieland big band, Sugar Willy and the Ten Cubes. Income from these groups, plus other freelance work, enabled him to stay in Sacramento and attend college, majoring in music and minoring in American history. The student was paid to teach horn at Sacramento State College and University of the Pacific in Stockton. In the late '60s, he served with the 52nd Army Band at Fort Ord and later with the 59th National Guard Band at Sacramento. Retiring from music in 1982, he joined his father Ted in the well drilling business. Herr started flying lessons at Sacramento's Branstetter Airport in 1964, and has over 1,800 private pilot hours. An avid student of aviation history since given Douglas Rolfe's Airplanes of the World at age nine, he has belonged to American Aviation Historical Society (AAHS) and the Experimental Aviation Association over 45 years. Herr always wanted to contribute to aviation history literature, thus authoring articles for the AAHS journal, British journal Air Enthusiast, and several regional historical society quarterlies. This is his third book in a series about early aviation in the Sacramento Valley and San Francisco Bay Area between 1910-1939. The others are Golden Wings Over The Feather River (2015) and Wooden Wings Over The Golden Gate (2016).