J. Don and D. M. Alexander

The Alexander Eaglerock exists because nobody would sell two brothers the airplanes they wanted. J. Don Alexander and his younger brother Don M. Alexander sold advertising films to movie theaters, and in the mid-1920s J. Don decided that his salesmen could cover far more ground, and grow their territories, if they flew. The brothers tried to buy up to fifty airplanes from other manufacturers, and they were turned down. So they built their own.

Julian Don Alexander was born on January 1, 1885, in Webster Groves, Missouri, and Don Miller Alexander followed in 1893. As boys in Keokuk, Iowa, they found an old projector in their grandfather's attic and charged local merchants to throw advertisements onto a sheet hung across the street. Don M. studied electrical engineering at Washington State, and the brothers ran an electrical business in Spokane before founding an advertising film company there in 1919. It became the Alexander Film Company, which made short advertisements shown in theaters before the feature. In 1923 they moved it to Englewood, just south of Denver. J. Don was the salesman and manager, and Don M. was the engineer.

Alexander Aircraft Company followed in 1925 as a subsidiary, under the parent firm Alexander Industries. J. Don earned his pilot's license, and the company hired a young local named Al Mooney, who had started out sweeping the Alexander hangar after school and signed on as a draftsman in 1925 at nineteen. The Eaglerock biplane went into production in 1926, and by August 1927 the company reported building one airplane a day and still running forty-one airplanes behind its orders. Charles Lindbergh went to see the Alexanders before he went to T. Claude Ryan, to ask them to build an airplane for his transatlantic flight, and they turned him down.

On April 20, 1928, a fire at the Englewood plant killed eleven employees. Within days the company began moving to Colorado Springs, where it built a factory on North Nevada Avenue and a flying field next door. In 1928 and 1929 the plant turned out as many as eight Eaglerocks a day, and for a brief time Alexander was one of the world's major makers of airplanes. In 1929 it introduced the Bullet, an advanced four-seat low-wing monoplane with retractable landing gear, but the stock market crash killed the market for it and only twelve were built. After 893 Eaglerocks, Alexander Aircraft filed for bankruptcy in August 1932.

The film company survived and became the world's largest producer of theater advertising films. J. Don Alexander died in Colorado Springs on May 6, 1955, and is buried beside his wife, Gertrude. Don M. ran the company until his retirement, entered the Colorado Aviation Hall of Fame in 1970, and died in Colorado Springs on February 11, 1971. The Alexander Industries records are held by the Pikes Peak Library District and History Colorado.

Our 1928 Alexander Long Wing Eaglerock was Al Mooney's first design to reach production, and it comes from the brothers' factory at the height of its brief boom.