Look up: Goodyear marks 125 years in business with historic flight of its blimp over Akron

This was a trip 125 years in the making.

Goodyear celebrated its milestone birthday on Tuesday with a pair special flights across Akron by its iconic Goodyear Blimp.

The noontime flight took a trek over landmarks that marked the company's impact on the community since Akron brothers F.A. and C.W. Seiberling co-founded Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. as a manufacturer of bicycle and carriage tires Aug. 29, 1898.

Happy 125th birthday, Goodyear! : Tuesday marks anniversary of Akron company's founding in 1898

Wingfoot 1 − actually technically considered an airship rather than a blimp since it has a rigid shell − took off a second time in the afternoon to hover over the company's headquarters in East Akron where company officials and employees marked the occasion.

Akron's resident historian Dave Lieberth, an attorney, former journalist and deputy mayor, hosted a history tour of the tiremaker on the earlier flight that passed over 11 different sites tied to Goodyear's history.

The airship operations are situated by Wingfoot Lake near Mogadore.

The vast body of water and land that is now a state park, Lieberth said, was acquired by Goodyear early on to ensure a steady supply of water for its plants.

It was also there that Goodyear got into the blimp making business and supplied the military with such observation aircraft starting in World War I.

Even at 1,500-feet, Lieberth said, the company's impact is evident on the city that is still considered by many as the rubber capital of the world.

The company's sprawling headquarters and manufacturing facilities that include an expansive test track and Goodyear Hall where the company's Wingfoot basketball team was a forerunner to the NBA still dominates a large chunk of real estate.

The row after row of tidy homes around the plant and the city were the places generations of tire workers from Goodyear and Firestone and other manufacturers called home.

F.A. Seiberling lived not too far away from his own Goodyear plant in a mansion where the University of Akron now stands.

But the smoke from his own industrial success, Lieberth said, drove Seiberling to build the stately Stan Hywet Hall in what was then considered the untamed countryside in 1915 just north of the city's center.

The estate and its gardens are now open to the public.

Looking back, Lieberth said, everything aligned just right for Goodyear's good fortunes.

"Goodyear exists because Akron had land, Akron had water," Lieberth said. "Akron had men who knew how to use machine tools. These essentially were the tools around which a burgeoning rubber company could be built."

The canal town already had a healthy industrial base in place at the company's founding.

The city had a number of clay-making companies that were churning out everything from toy marbles to pipes.

It was many of these already successful industrialists who fronted the $100,000 the Sieberling brothers needed to found Goodyear.

"Akron did shape the start of Goodyear," Lieberth said. "But as Goodyear grew over a century and a quarter, clearly, Goodyear also helped shape the city of Akron."

And that could not be more evident than on Tuesday when the company's iconic Goodyear Blimp took a victory lap or two or three over the city and folks down below did what they always do.

Look up.

"In Akron we take the blimp for granted," Lieberth said. "But we don't take it for granted too much that we all still don't stop and look up."

Craig Webb, who had waited impatiently 23 years at the Beacon Journal for his turn to ride in the airship, can be reached at cwebb@thebeaconjournal.com.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Goodyear marks 125 years in business with a blimp flight over Akron