Long before SFO existed, you could book a flight over San Francisco Bay during the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition — a world’s fair built to celebrate both the Panama Canal and San Francisco’s rebirth after the 1906 quake.
A century ago, crowds watched pilots loop and dive above the glittering “Jewel City,” its 435-foot Tower of Jewels flashing with 100,000 glass crystals. At night, biplanes traced firelit arcs over the water.
Two local brothers, Allan and Malcolm Loughead, offered ten-minute seaplane rides from the Bay itself — their first home-built aircraft rising from the waves where the Marina District now sits. They earned just enough from those flights to move south, change the spelling of their name to Lockheed, and help invent modern aviation.
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