If you tried this today, the National Park Service and the FAA would probably seize your airplane and haul you off to jail. But a hundred years ago this month, the cover of the December 1922 issue of Popular Mechanics showed the first ever landing of an airplane in the Grand Canyon.

Aviator Royal D. Thomas, accompanied by photographer Anthony Ugren, successfully landed the plane at Plateau Point, despite the treacherous air currents that were known to exist there. “To the Indians who had assembled in their best paint and feathers, it must have been an awe-inspiring sight, similar to that of earlier generations of red men who saw the centaurlike cavaliers of the Spaniards and the steam train for the first time.”

The landing of the 180 horsepower plane took place on the morning of August 18. The next morning, the upward flight out of the canyon took 4-1/2 minutes, although Thomas estimated that it would have taken a minute longer if he hadn’t caught an upward air current that lifted him nearly 1500 feet.