Before the Border: Les Mauldin and the Midwest Barnstorming Circuit

 Before the Border: Les Mauldin and the Midwest Barnstorming Circuit

Long before municipal airports and international routes, Les Mauldin was working the grandstands.

An undated newspaper clipping describes his participation in a July 3rd and 4th American Legion “Celebration and National Athletic Carnival,” where crowds gathered for aerial exhibitions that included wing walking, rope ladder transfers between wings, and even looping the airplane while standing outside the cockpit.

It was the kind of flying that defined early 1920s America.

The clipping also notes that he held contracts for the Missouri and Illinois State Fairs — two of the major exhibition venues of the Midwest. During this period, state fairs regularly featured war-surplus biplanes performing stunts above packed grandstands. Pilots moved from town to town under seasonal contracts, often appearing at patriotic American Legion events before heading to fairgrounds later in the summer.

This was the same barnstorming world that young Charles Lindbergh passed through in 1922–1923, working as a wing walker, mechanic, and parachutist before achieving national fame. Most names from that circuit never became household words. Yet they were the ones who carried aviation from military surplus fields to rural America.

Les Mauldin appears to have been one of those working pilots — part of the informal network that stitched together state fairs, Legion celebrations, and exhibition circuits across the Midwest.

Before Brownsville.
Before Mexico.
Before international routes.

He was already walking the wings.