Born in New Britain, Connecticut in 1883, at three years old Donald H. Gordon moved with his mother, father, and three brothers to the Bostonia area of Southern California. As a child Gordon watched as his oldest brother built a framework of bamboo, stretched a sheet of paper over it, and jumped off the barn with it. While that attempt was a failure, it spurred Gordon’s interest in flight.

During his 20s, Gordon began studying the work of others and by 1908 he had completed his own glider. A true pioneer for the time, Gordon was able to sit in the plane and control it instead of hanging in it and shifting his weight to control direction. Gordon’s aircraft was a biplane with a controllable front elevator, not dissimilar to the plane of the Wright brothers. The wings of Gordon’s plane measured 28 feet and the length of the plane measured 18 feet.

In 1909, after the success of the glider, Gordon added a 2-cylinder Curtiss motorcycle engine to the aircraft. The plane, with the seven horsepower engine and a three wheel landing gear was light enough that Gordon could lift the entire machine himself. Though Gordon was able to get a few “hops” from his aircraft, he ultimately was unable to sustain flight. When the plane crashed, Gordon took the opportunity to obtain a 4-clynider Curtiss engine which could nearly double his horsepower. Gordon’s a new biplane (a tractor) had a conventional tail, no front elevator, a two wheel landing gear, ailerons, no dihedral, and his seat was in the rear. Using this plane, Gordon could fly all around his 40 acre field. In doing so, Donald Gordon became the first person west of the Mississippi River to successfully fly a powered aircraft.

Between 1912 and 1914, Gordon built a monoplane, arranged like Santos Dumont’s “Demoiselle”. It was externally braced, had a high wing, and outrigger tail and the pilot seated under the engine and wing and very close to the ground. Using a 4-cylinder water cooled engine of 40 horsepower, Gordon was able to fly successfully around a large field in Ramona, California.

Once WWI started, Gordon stopped working on planes and attempted to join the Air Service, but was rejected on account of his increasing deafness. After the war Gordon bought a Wright-engine, but never built a plane for it. He later donated the engine to the then named San Diego Aerospace Museum. Donald Gordon lived out the remainder of his life on 160 acres on Palomar Mountain.