Sanderson crowd gathers as the Vin Fiz takes off from a landing field
near the Terrell County Courthouse

On September 17, 1911, Cal Rodgers discarded the cigar he had been chewing, adjusted his goggles, climbed into the Wright EX plane and zoomed into the sky. The plane came to be known as the "Vin Fiz" because the makers of Vin Fiz, a popular soft drink of the day, sponsored the transcontinental flight. The Vin Fiz was the smallest plane made by the Wright Brothers, weighing less than 800 pounds and powered by a 196-pound, 35-horsepower, four-cylinder, water-cooled engine.

Bad weather and machinery failure forced Rodgers to give up on his dream of winning $50,000 offered by publisher William Randolph Hearst to the first man who could fly from New York to San Francisco in less than 30 days. But, he did not give up his determination to fly coast-to-coast.

Armour Meatpackers paid the aviator $5 for every mile he flew displaying the Vin Fiz advertisement lettered on the wings and tail of the bi-plane. After the first few landings in Texas, Rodgers declared that he was the "only aviator on earth that has had a tire punctured by a cactus...." But he became adept at dodging cactus, mesquite bushes, and barbed wire fences, landing in Dryden on October 26 and in Sanderson on October 28, 1911, on the first transcontinental flight.