Ben Lomond author gives prolific inventor, John J. Montgomery,
the long-overdue credit he deserves Few Santa Cruzans know that
some of the breakthrough experiments in aviation history
occurred right in their own backyard. When humankind began to
believe in the seemingly impossible notion of controlled flight
in the early 1900s, the Wright brothers held the spotlight for
their powered aerial flights in Kitty Hawk, N.C. Meanwhile,
another man’s breakthrough inventions took to the skies above
Aptos. “Aptos was the Kitty Hawk of the West,” says Craig
Harwood. The Ben Lomond resident recently co-authored the book
“Quest for Flight,” which tells the tale of a prolific inventor
named John J. Montgomery, whose breakthroughs in human-
controlled air flight—many of which took place in the Santa Cruz
region—fueled the legacy of American aviation. “It was this
significant transition from idea and model to being fully
demonstrated in a controlled flight hundreds of feet above the
earth,” he explains.