Archives West Finding Aid

The son of George H. and Flora Robertson Brimhall, Dean was born on December 11, 1886, in Provo, Utah. George H. Brimhall served as president of Brigham Young University from 1903-1921.

In 1907 young Brimhall left for Germany to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon). While in Germany he watched Orville Wright make the first power-plane flight in 1908. Kaiser Wilhelm attended the event with 250,000 soldiers and many other onlookers. This was Brimhall's first exposure to the wonders of human flight. In 1909 Brimhall returned to the United States.

Returning to Utah, Dean Brimhall enrolled at Brigham Young University and graduated in 1913 with a bachelor's degree in psychology. He received a scholarship to study at Columbia University in New York City and received his master's degree in 1916. Intermittently between 1916-1922 Brimhall taught psychology at BYU and was an instructor at Columbia in 1917-18. During this time he also served as personal assistant to Dr. James McKeen Cattell, nationally renown psychologist. (He was so impressed with the great psychologist that he later named his son McKeen.) In 1920 Brimhall received his Ph.D. at Columbia.

While living in New York, Brimhall met his future wife Lila Eccles. They were married on August 28, 1917, and later had two children--a son, McKeen, and daughter, Frances. McKeen was killed in action during World War II. Frances married Hal Osborn.

After receiving his Ph.D. Brimhall was successful as co-editor of the third edition of American Men of Science published in 1921. He also worked for a year for the National Research Council in Washington, D.C.

In 1922 Brimhall became the first executive-secretary of the Psychological Corporation in New York City. He helped organize this corporation which was headed by E. L. Thorndike of Columbia; J. McKeen Cattell of Science Press; James R. Angell, the president of Yale University; and others. The purpose of this organization was to effect contacts between qualified psychologists and business firms that wanted their services, and to conduct human engineering research for business.

In 1925 Brimhall left the Psychological Corporation, returned to Utah, and entered private business. He became the treasurer of the Mt. Hood Railroad, a director of the Oregon Lumber Company, and an operator of large real estate holdings. It was at this time that Brimhall and Robert H. Hinckley started Utah Pacific Airways, Inc.

Utah Pacific Airways first represented the Beechcraft organization but later became a distributor for Curtiss-Wright Company. While serving as president of Utah Pacific, Brimhall helped promote the first air census of big game. The method he devised was so successful it replaced the inefficient and expensive ground counting method. He also directed the first experiments by the United States Forest Service in the use of airplanes to control forest fires.

Brimhall became very interested in aviation safety programs. The practices he established for Utah Pacific were so successful that during six years of training hundreds of students, transporting charter passengers, and conducting experiments for government agencies, not one pilot or passenger was killed or injured.

In 1933 Brimhall became the Utah director of aviation for the Civil Works Administration. He worked to construct a network of municipal and emergency landing fields throughout the state.

During the early years of the Roosevelt administration, he was Utah planning director for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). In January of 1935 he became director of the Utah State Planning Board, which developed policies for the extensive federal work programs of the state. Later that same year Brimhall accepted a position with the Works Progress Administration under Harry L. Hopkins. He served as an advisor on labor relations from 1935 until 1939. While serving with the WPA Brimhall fought to keep relief funds for those unable to find employment in private business.

Robert H. Hinckley, chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Authority, made Brimhall his assistant in 1939. Together Hinckley and Brimhall conceived and organized the first civilian pilot training program in the year just prior to World War II. This program was so successful that at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941), the number of civilian pilots had increased from 25,000 to 100,000 and the number of airplanes from 12,000 to 25,000.

In 1940 when Hinckley became Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Air, Brimhall again became his assistant. Brimhall also became the director of research for the Civil Aeronautics Administration where he conducted experiments that were of great value to both military and civilian aviation. His investigations into the causes of air accidents led to the use of safety devices which cut the accident rate among private flyers by fifty per cent. The stall warning device was probably the most important of these. Brimhall also directed investigations leading to more accurate and equitable proficiency flight tests for the air transport rating of pilots.

The Civil Aeronautics Administration acted on Brimhall's advice and appointed 7,000 examiners of airplanes and pilots who worked without pay. This practice not only avoided government employment of hundreds of inspectors at a very large cost, but it put the responsibility for inspection service on the members of the trade. This, Brimhall considered one of his greatest achievements. Dean Brimhall retired from the CAA and government work in 1951.

In 1947 Brimhall and Arthur S. Otis undertook a research project to discover how consistent congressmen's voting records were. After studying and compiling the voting records of all representatives and senators, they published an article titled "Consistency of Voting by Our Congressmen" in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Brimhall and his wife Lila acquired "Manana Farm," a fifty-two acre orchard near the village of Fruita, in Wayne County, Utah, in the 1940s. This farm, located in the Capitol Reef area, was where Brimhall spent vacations and much of his time after retiring.

After he retired, Brimhall developed a great interest in Indian pictographs and became an authority on Indian art in Utah's Canyonlands. He devoted many years to photographing these pictographs and was often accompanied by world-renowned archeologists on these excursions. He astounded younger colleagues with the way he challenged perilous ledges when in his eighties. When he was eighty years old and two hundred of his invaluable slides were stolen from his car, he vowed to go back and photograph them again. Fortunately, many of the friends he had led into the canyons sent their slides to replace his.

Brimhall remained active long after retirement. He was always interested in national, state, and local politics, and never hesitated to express his views. One such way was by writing letters to the editors of various newspapers. His testimony and lobbying helped insure the preservation of irreplaceable pictographs by including them within the boundaries of Canyonlands National Park. Brimhall also served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Utah State Historical Society for a number of years. He died on May 14, 1972, in Salt Lake City, Utah.