Ready For Isthmus Flight.

New York Times 100 years ago today, April 17, 1913:
Fowler Intends to Try to Fly from Ocean to Ocean To-day.
Special Cable to The New York Times.
    PANAMA, April 16.— Robert G. Fowler, a California aviator, who came there several weeks ago with a moving picture camera and an aeroplane and made public announcement of his intention to fly from the Pacific to the Atlantic across the Isthmus, held his final trial flight this afternoon. It was a satisfactory trial, and at its conclusion Fowler said that he would ascend with a moving picture operator at 10 o'clock to-morrow morning to make the ocean-to-ocean flight.
    The decision of Fowler to attempt a flight across the Isthmus was made after several aviators had abandoned the plan as impracticable. James H. Hare visited Panama with an aeroplane belonging to Robert G. Collier last year, but could find no suitable places either for starting or landing. The air route, he discovered, lay above treacherous cliffs and wooded hills, where no successful landing could be made in case of accident. He said that any effort to cross the Isthmus in an aeroplane would be suicidal. Fowler attempted to fly across the continent from San Francisco in 1911, but his aeroplane was wrecked in the Sierra Nevada Mountains when he struck some tall trees in attempting to make a landing. In a later attempt made from San Bernardino he flew 2,100 miles before abandoning his trip.