Connecticut's History and Affection for Hot Air Ballooning

Construction on the Merritt and traffic snarls on I-95 can lead idling drivers to flights of fancy, particularly as warmer weather reaches the region.

This week, The Hub floats (figuratively) above The Nutmeg State and looks at hot air ballooning, as history and hobby. Connecticut is home to several hot air balloon companies and in earlier times used hot air balloons to conduct a bit of surveying. 

Hot air balloons are among the first methods people used to take to the skies. Historians tell us that France’s Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier, developed the first balloon to take flight. It soared on Nov. 21, 1783 and was piloted by Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier and Francois Lauraent d’Arlandes. The French word for hot air balloon is “montgolfier” in French.

According to the FAA, a hot air balloon is one of the safest aircrafts in aviation.

Mick Murphy, president of the Connecticut Lighter Than Air Society, CLAS, stressed the importance of flight safety. The FAA holds many classes and seminars for those interested in becoming hot air balloon pilots. The FAA also holds hot air balloon maintenance classes.

CLAS, a Southbury-based group, promotes ballooning throughout the state, including in Fairfield County. Each year, hundreds of pilots, crew and enthusiasts get together to trade flight tips and participate in hot air balloon festivals from Vermont to New Mexico.

In June, Goshen hosts a hot air festival in and in August Bristol holds its own balloon festival.

In Fairfield, A Yankee Balloon’s owner and operator Bill Colyer takes people high over Litchfield Hills, Central Connecticut, and the Housatonic and Naugatuck River Valleys.

Colyer offers champagne flights to flight instruction and also holds school programs complete with ballooning education.

Riding high over the state was still something shocking 126 years ago.

In 1885, according to the Connecticut State Library, Alfred E. Moore and John G. Doughty flew over the state in a hot air balloon. Moore was excited, Doughty not so much. In fact Doughty wrote about his near paralyzing fear of leaving the earth and rejoiced each time the flight was delayed.

“Although I had always wished (as who has not?) to taste the pleasures of a balloon ascension, yet, when in July 1885, Mr. A. E. Moore confided to me that he was having a large balloon built, and asked my opinion concerning the possibility of photographing from it, nothing was further from my thoughts than that I should ever realize my aspirations,” Doughty wrote in ‘Balloon Experience of a Timid Photographer.”

But up he went and snapped away. Well, not snapped since cameras were a tad more cumbersome in those days.

“The maplike effect of the landscape is very striking,” wrote Doughty. “The course of streams, with the different railroads and highways, may be traced for many miles, dividing the country into regular bolts, which are gain subdivided by the farms.”

Today people can see Doughty’s balloon aerial photographs on line at the Connecticut Historical Society.