At 14:00 on Friday, February 23, 1934, United Air Lines Boeing 247, registered as NC13357, with serial number 1739,[1][2] departed Salt Lake City, Utah, bound for Cheyenne, Wyoming.
[3] "The last word received by radio from the ill-fated plane was when pilot Lloyd Anderson signaled "All Okay" 20 minutes after the departure.
"[4] Throughout Saturday, February 24, aircraft covered the routes the missing airliner might have traveled, and the United Air Lines office at Salt Lake City made phone calls "to all points in the vicinity.
[4] Chief Pilot H. T. 'Slim' Lewis and his assistant, Leon D. Cuddeback, ordered a search with Rock Springs, Wyoming, as the center.
Weather, which Frank Caldwell, operations manager for United, called "the worst in the history of flying in this region," hampered rescue workers throughout the day.
Members waded through snow 4 ft (1.2 m) deep for 4 mi (6.4 km) to reach the accident site.
After completing his flying course, he barnstormed and instructed on the West Coast and later opened a temporary line between Mexicali, Mazatlan, and Mexico City.
[5] Anderson also surveyed and opened a mail line between Mazatlan and Brownsville, Texas, and later was with CAT, flying between El Paso and Mexico City.
[8] The search party found the wreckage with the "nose buried deep in the earth and its broken tail standing upwards.
In the front of the interior, the mangled bodies were heaped, that of Miss Carter on the top, indicating, it was believed, that she was in the rear of the cabin when the liner hurtled into the mountain.
[8] Judge John C. Green, coroner of Summit County, Utah, took charge of the bodies as they were removed from the wreckage.
They were carried over 2 mi of snowy trail, through heavy brush and rough country, to a roadhouse on the highway at the summit of Parley's Canyon, and then to Salt Lake City in an ambulance.
"[8] Both groups returned from the crash site in the Wasatch Mountains to Salt Lake City on the night of February 26, but both admitted to an inability to reach any conclusions.