Breedlove Airport
Lubbock, Lubbock County, Texas
Marker Inscription
WHEN CHARLES LINDBERGH WAS TRAVELLING THE U.S. BY AIRPLANE ON A SPEAKING TOUR, HE WAS UNABLE TO LAND AT LUBBOCK BECAUSE THERE WAS NO AIRPORT AT THE TIME. CITY LEADERS AND AVIATION ENTHUSIASTS, DETERMINED TO SEE THAT LUBBOCK WOULD NOT MISS OUT ON THE NEW WAVE OF AVIATION, RAISED THE FUNDS FOR A MUNICIPAL AIRPORT. THE AIRPORT WAS ESTABLISHED IN 1930 AT ITS PRESENT LOCATION NORTH OF THE CITY, AND WAS MANAGED BY CLENT BREEDLOVE, A WELL-KNOWN LOCAL AVIATOR. IN SEP. 1939, BREEDLOVE LEFT HIS POSITION TO OPEN HIS OWN FLYING SERVICE LOCATED AT THE SECOND HANGAR AT THE LUBBOCK MUNICIPAL AIRPORT. THEN ON DEC. 20, 1941, HE OPENED BREEDLOVE AIRPORT JUST EAST OF THE TAHOKA HIGHWAY (NOW MLK BOULEVARD) ON EAST 50TH STREET. BREEDLOVE LIVED AT THE AIRPORT WITH HIS WIFE AULYNE AND DAUGHTER MARY LOUISE. HE AND HIS WIFE OWNED AND OPERATED THE AIRPORT UNTIL 1947. IT CONSISTED OF FOUR LARGE RUNWAYS, A HANGAR, SHOP AND PARTS ROOM, STORAGE HANGAR, DOPING ROOM, CAFÉ, RESTROOMS AND TWO-STORY ADMINISTRATION BUILDING WITH CONTROL TOWER. DURING WORLD WAR II, BREEDLOVE AIRPORT, SITUATED ON 219 ACRES OF LAND, WAS USED TO TRAIN THOUSANDS OF CADET PILOTS IN THE CIVILIAN PILOT TRAINING PROGRAM (CPTP) AND THE TEXAS TECH PRE-FLIGHTS PROGRAM (309TH COLLEGE TRAINING DETACHMENT). THE SITE ALSO SERVED AS LUBBOCK’S COMMERCIAL AIRPORT DURING THE WAR YEARS. ON FEB. 6, 1943, CONGRESSMAN GEORGE H. MAHON ANNOUNCED THAT A NEW MILITARY CORPS WAS TO USE TEXAS TECH’S FACILITIES FOR WAR-TIME TRAINING. THE PRE-FLIGHT PROGRAM WAS A WAY FOR COLLEGES AND CIVILIAN CONTRACTORS TO PROVIDE THE INITIAL TRAINING FOR PILOTS, WAS CRITICAL TO FULFILLING THE DESPERATE NEED FOR PILOTS DURING THE WAR, AND ALSO GAVE A LARGE ECONOMIC BOOST TO LUBBOCK-AREA BUSINESSES. THE CPTP AND PRE-FLIGHT PROGRAMS EDUCATED AN ESTIMATED 3,750 MILITARY STUDENTS IN THE BASICS OF FLIGHT, CIVIL AIR REGULATIONS AND VARIOUS COLLEGE-LEVEL COURSES.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When Lubbock lacked an airport in the 1920s, civic boosters raised money for a municipal field, opened in 1930 and managed by local flyer Clent Breedlove. In 1941 Breedlove opened his own 219-acre airport east of the Tahoka Highway, complete with four runways, hangars, a café and a control tower. During World War II the field trained thousands of cadet pilots through the Civilian Pilot Training Program and Texas Tech's pre-flight detachment, feeding the nation's desperate wartime need for aviators.
Why it matters
Breedlove Airport shows how a remote West Texas town plugged itself into both the aviation age and the WWII mobilization that turned ordinary civilian fields into engines of the war effort.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1920s and '30s, aviation was the new frontier of American ambition, and no town wanted to be left on the ground. Charles Lindbergh's 1927 solo crossing of the Atlantic had turned flight from a daredevil stunt into a national obsession, and cities across the country scrambled to prove they belonged to the coming age of the airplane.
Lubbock, out on the West Texas plains, felt that pressure sharply. The story that opens this marker captures the anxiety perfectly: when Lindbergh himself passed through on a cross-country tour, he could not even land, because the town had no airport. For a community that saw itself as a rising commercial hub, that was an intolerable gap.
So the town did what ambitious towns did — it raised the money itself. A municipal airport opened north of the city in 1930, and the stage was set for a local aviator to turn a civic project into a career, and eventually into something the whole nation would need.
People & events
The man at the center of it was Clent Breedlove, a well-known local flyer who managed that first municipal airport. In September 1939 he struck out on his own, opening a flying service at the field's second hangar, and on December 20, 1941, he opened Breedlove Airport itself, just east of the Tahoka Highway — the road we now call MLK Boulevard — on East 50th Street.
This was no bare landing strip. Breedlove lived on the property with his wife, Aulyne, and their daughter, Mary Louise, and together he and Aulyne owned and ran the airport until 1947. Spread across 219 acres, it boasted four large runways, a hangar, a shop and parts room, a storage hangar, a doping room for treating aircraft fabric, a café, restrooms, and a two-story administration building crowned with a control tower.
Then the war changed everything. Breedlove Airport became a training ground, putting thousands of cadet pilots through the Civilian Pilot Training Program and the Texas Tech pre-flight program, the 309th College Training Detachment. It doubled as Lubbock's commercial airport through the war years. On February 6, 1943, Congressman George H. Mahon announced that a new military corps would use Texas Tech's facilities for wartime training. Between the CPTP and pre-flight programs, an estimated 3,750 military students learned the basics of flight, civil air regulations, and college-level coursework here.
Its place in the American story
When the United States entered World War II, it faced a desperate shortage of pilots — and it met that shortage in an unusual way, by turning the nation's scattered civilian airfields and colleges into a vast training machine. Breedlove Airport is a vivid case study in how that worked. A privately owned field on the edge of a West Texas town became a link in a coast-to-coast pipeline feeding aviators to the war effort.
The Civilian Pilot Training Program was the mechanism. Conceived in the late 1930s as a federal effort, it let colleges and civilian contractors provide the crucial first stage of a pilot's education, cheaply and at scale. It is the reason a rancher's son from the plains could get his first hours in the air without ever seeing a military base.
There was a second, quieter significance: money. The marker is candid that these programs gave a large economic boost to Lubbock-area businesses. Across the country, wartime training turned ordinary towns into boomtowns, and Breedlove's café, hangars, and control tower were part of that transformation — proof that the war was won not only overseas but on thousands of home-front runways like this one.
If you visit
You're standing where a small aviation empire once sprawled across 219 acres. Try to imagine four long runways, a busy hangar line, and a two-story administration building with a control tower rising over the plains — and a young family living right there among the aircraft, running the whole operation. The land around Lubbock is famously flat and open, which is exactly why it made such superb flying country.
Use the marker to reset your sense of scale. Thousands of cadets passed through here; every one of them was a person learning, often for the first time, to leave the earth. Reading the plaque, you're standing in the takeoff path of a generation of American aviators.
The site sits along what is now MLK Boulevard, and it fits neatly into any trip exploring Lubbock's twentieth-century story. Don't expect to find the runways still in use — the marker doesn't promise that, and you shouldn't either — but do take a moment to look up. That empty sky overhead was, for a few urgent years, one of the busiest classrooms in the country.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Clent Breedlove
- · Charles Lindbergh
- · George H. Mahon
Related events
- · Civilian Pilot Training Program
- · World War II pilot training
Themes & tags
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