Pearson Air Museum

The Pearson Air Museum (once known as the Jack Murdock Aviation Center) is located at Pearson Field and focuses on the period from 1905 through World War II, when Pearson Field was the site of a number aviation firsts. The Museum is within the Vancouver National Historic Reserve Historic District. The 23,500-square-foot museum features a pictorial history of Pearson Field and historic artifacts and aircraft. The black and yellow checkerboard roof was common at Army airfields during the “Golden Age of Flight”, when pilots often needed visual guides to a safe landing. The museum includes such planes as a 1912 Curtiss Pusher replica, a 1913 Voisin III (one of only three in the world), and a reconstructed DeHavilland DH-48 Liberty. The museum also includes the country’s second oldest wooden hangar, built in 1918 as part of the U.S. Army Spruce Division. The hanger has been used as an airplane hangar since 1921. It housed Italian prisoners of war during W.W.II.

You enter the reception area with a large plan painted on the wall.

A photo show an original Curtiss Pusher on the roof the Multnomah Hotel and the museums replica behind it.

A reproduction of the Curtiss Pusher that flew off of roof of the Multnomah Hotel and landed a Pearson Field.

Most of the information is brought forth through a series of display panels.

One of the replica plans at the air museum.

A replica of a tent used to house working troops at the spruce lumber mill.

Inside a tent used by the solder workers at the mill.

Large diorama of the WW1 spruce lumber mill. The mill cut spruce trees into denominational lumber to be used in making plans for the war.

Showing part of the diorama of the WW1 spruce lumber mill.