But, at the end of the day, the club's historicity is thin at best. Peter Navarro, a graphic designer who purchased Dellschau's work after its landfill rescue (and later devoted decades of his life to studying and decodings the texts), wrote, "Many of the newsworthy events that Dellschau claimed to have happened while he was there have been verified. But those events dealing with the activities of the Aero Club have not." He concluded, "A personal search of records and cemeteries . . . have turned up nothing that would prove the members of the Aero Club ever existed." And though Baker-White can find some names in later California records, others crop up in turn-of-the-century Houston, where Dellschau lived out his later years and created his books.

All the signs seem to indicate that Dellschau's Sonora Aero Club is not exactly an accurate recounting of fact. But even as a fabrication, Dellschau's dreams represent a historical truth: This was a country seized with a dream of flight.

If Dellschau did go to California, which it seems that he did, it makes sense that he would have arrived there fantasizing about air travel: The journey westward was full of hardship -- whether over land across the American continent or by boat around Cape Horn -- many in America wanted to be in California without ever having to go through the trouble of getting there. Rufus Porter, the founder of Scientific American, published a pamphlet in 1849 entitled Aerial Navigation: The Practicability of Travelling Pleasantly and Safely from New York to California in Three Days.

Charles A.A. Dellschau (American, b. Prussia, 1830 - 1923), detail. Press Bloom, A Flying Machine that Folds its Wing, 1912. Mixed media. San Antonio Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by the Annual Gift Appeal. Full image available Charles A.A. Dellschau (American, b. Prussia, 1830 - 1923), detail. Press Bloom, A Flying Machine that Folds its Wing, 1912. Mixed media. San Antonio Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by the Annual Gift Appeal. Full image available here

"Think about the fear that you would have going across this huge country, and encountering all kinds of hazards, and just being afraid," Baker-White remarked, "and how easy it would seem to just go across in a balloon." Dellschau himself expresses this desire, laden with the prejudices and racial tensions of the time, writing in the border of one plate that "the main Object [was] to be able to cross the plains -- and avoid Indian -- or White mans stares."

Drinking clubs, too, were common (one founded at that time -- E Clampus Vitus -- still exists). The whole idea that during the Gold Rush, a group of men would have gathered weekly to drink while concocting designs for balloons, dirigibles, and other flight craft is "totally plausible," according to Baker-White. It's more the specifics than the notion of the Sonora Aero Club that are historically suspect.

All of this was occurring during a time when people the world over -- not just westward-bound gold diggers -- could feel themselves on the cusp of an airborne age. Europeans of the 18th century were going absolutely nuts over air balloons, something Dellschau may have picked up during his formative years in Germany. But flight had obsessed humans for far longer. Crouch put it beautifully:

Flight was, after all, the great dream of the ages. It may have been the one technological dream that's innate in human beings -- because of the birds, because other creatures fly and we don't. It becomes -- the dream of flight becomes -- psychologically embedded in us, connected to those human desires to escape, to soar over obstacles -- whether geographic or obstacles in life.

That psychological landscape was in place and then, all of the sudden, in the late 18th century and into the 19th, with the advent of balloons, advances in mechanical engineering, and the harnessing of electricity, that long-held dream became a real possibility. "You have these waves of just raw enthusiasm sweeping through society," Crouch muses. He imagines a sort of collective realization, a moment when everyone took it all in, looked at one another, and exclaimed, "Gosh, you know, now we can actually do this!"