The Captain Jack name began in 1977 when Bill Dennis started doing aerial traffic reports for WHO radio. Later WHO-TV and its FM station KLYF were added to the stations using Captain Jack traffic reports. Captain Jack has over 17,000 hours of flying time and over 2,000,000 miles of flying. (Prior to 1977, Bill was a flight instructor for private and commercial pilots and still holds current commercial airplane and commercial helicopter licenses). In addition to aerial traffic reports, Bill added aerial photography to the operation. Although he retired from aerial traffic reports in 2001, several thousand aerial photos are shot each year. Bill also started programming computers in the early 1980's when "home" computers first came out. Bill now enjoys Internet programming "HTML" and all of these pages were written by him. Bill also purchased his own Internet server in 1996 and now with Captain Jack Communications, provides a direct connection to the Internet "backbone" in Chicago.

The Captain Jack Tree Farm was started in the Spring of 1984 when Bill purchased 40 acres of land for a Christmas tree farm near Saylorville Lake, just north of Des Moines, IA. That year 1,500 seedlings were planted. Today, the tree farm has grown to 75 acres and has approximately 50,000 evergreen trees and seedlings. Captain Jack's Tree Farm is a "choose and cut" Christmas tree farm and specializes in evergreen species such as Scotch Pine, White Pine and Blue Spruce.

The Christmas season was always very special at Captain Jack's Tree Farm. You could listen to holiday music and eat free popcorn while you choose your tree! There was a seasonal gift shop displaying many unique Christmas tree collectibles and ornaments which are available for sale. In the gift shop, we had a large-scale model train to add to the holiday fun.

2006 was my last selling season - I've retired