Ellington Field
Houston, Harris County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1917, during World War I, the Houston Chamber of Commerce lobbied the federal government to establish an air field here. Named for Lt. Eric Lamar Ellington, an Illinois aviator killed in a California plane crash in 1913, it opened in November 1917. The site transferred to the National Guard during the 1920s, and following a fire and demolition, all that remained by the 1930s was a concrete water tank. The government retained ownership, leasing the site for grazing cattle. By the 1940s, the threat of another world conflict caused the U.S. to reactivate the base. Ellington was vital to American war planning during World War II due to its strategic location near oil refineries and the Houston Ship Channel. Construction began in 1940, and among the first improvements was a service apron believed to be the largest concrete slab in the world at the time. Troops began arriving at the modernized facility in April 1941. Ellington was primarily a pilot training center, but navigators and bombardiers, as well as aviators from other countries, also trained here. Because the field was operational prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, one of every ten Army pilots went through its flying school in the first two years of the war. Later, the Army Air Force ran an advanced navigator training school here. After the war, Ellington was home to a Texas Air National Guard unit. During the Cold War, it again became an active Air Force base, primarily for navigator training. The Air Force abandoned the base in 1976, and the site has since been shared by the Texas Air National Guard, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Texas Army Guard, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the City of Houston, which, since 1984, has used much of it for a municipal airport. Texas in World War II, V+60 (2005)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Ellington Field opened in November 1917 after the Houston Chamber of Commerce lobbied for a World War I air base, named for a young Army aviator killed in a 1913 crash. Nearly abandoned by the 1930s, it roared back to life in World War II as a major pilot, navigator, and bombardier training center — so busy that one in ten Army pilots trained here in the war's first two years. Through the Cold War it remained an active Air Force base for navigator training, and today its grounds are shared by the National Guard, NASA, the Coast Guard, and a city airport.
Why it matters
From World War I biplanes to NASA, Ellington Field traces a century of American air and space power taking flight over the Texas coast.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When the first airfield rose on this stretch of the Texas coast in 1917, powered flight was barely older than a teenager. The United States had just entered World War I, and the Army suddenly needed pilots by the thousands — men who, only a few years earlier, would have had no reason to imagine leaving the ground. Cities across the country competed to host the new training fields, understanding that a base meant payrolls, prestige, and a place in the century that was clearly going to belong to the airplane.
Houston in those years was a fast-growing port city, hungry to prove it belonged among the nation's important places. Its Chamber of Commerce pressed Washington hard for a field, and it got one. The flat coastal prairie was ideal for flying — open, unobstructed, and close to the water — and the wide Gulf sky gave student aviators room to make the mistakes that early flight demanded.
Then came the quiet years. After the war the urgency drained away, the field passed to the National Guard, and fire and neglect did the rest. By the 1930s the story here was almost over: a lone concrete water tank standing in a pasture where the government leased the land for grazing cattle. It is easy to forget how close many great sites come to simply disappearing.
People & events
The field carries the name of a man who never saw it: Lt. Eric Lamar Ellington, an aviator from Illinois killed in a plane crash in California in 1913. He belonged to that small, daring first generation of military fliers for whom the machines themselves were as dangerous as any enemy. Naming a field for a pilot lost in peacetime training was a fitting choice, because training — not combat — would become this place's true work.
The field's second life began with a gathering storm. As the threat of another world war grew in the late 1930s, the government reactivated the base it had nearly forgotten. Construction started in 1940, and among the first additions was a service apron said to be the largest concrete slab in the world at the time — a small, telling detail of how seriously the country was now taking the air. Troops arrived at the modernized facility in April 1941, months before the attack on Pearl Harbor pulled the nation fully into the fight.
That head start mattered enormously. Because the school was already running when war came, it could train at full speed from the very first days. The inscription records a staggering figure: in the war's first two years, one of every ten Army pilots passed through this flying school. Later the Army Air Forces added an advanced navigator training school, and the field taught not only pilots but bombardiers, navigators, and aviators from other countries — a whole ecosystem of the men who would fill the crews of American warplanes.
Its place in the American story
The great air war of the 1940s was won as much in classrooms and over practice ranges as it was over Europe and the Pacific, and this field was one of the engines of that unseen effort. A nation cannot put crews in the sky faster than it can teach them to fly, and places like this one solved that problem at industrial scale. The location was no accident: sitting near the oil refineries and the Houston Ship Channel, it stood at the meeting point of American fuel, American industry, and American airpower.
What happened here after the guns fell silent is just as revealing of the national story. The field did not fade a second time. Through the Cold War it became an active Air Force base again, training the navigators who guided long-range aircraft in the tense decades of superpower standoff. The same runways that launched biplane students in one world war were still shaping American aviators two generations later.
When the Air Force finally departed in 1976, the site did not close so much as multiply. Today its grounds are shared by the Texas Air National Guard, the Texas Army Guard, the Coast Guard, the City of Houston's municipal airport, and NASA — the space agency whose home region sits nearby. From a wooden-hangar flying school to the doorstep of human spaceflight, this single field traces the whole American arc from the first fragile airplanes to the edge of orbit.
If you visit
Stand here and try to hold two pictures in your mind at once: the open cattle pasture with its solitary water tank in the 1930s, and the roar of training aircraft that filled this same sky only a few years later. Few places change character so completely and so fast, and the marker rewards a slow read precisely because the ground gives so little of that drama away on its own.
This is working aviation country, not a preserved museum field, so let the modern activity be part of the experience. Aircraft still come and go, and knowing that pilots and navigators trained on this very site for the better part of a century adds weight to every engine you hear. Watch for the mix of civil and military use — a reminder that this ground never really retired.
If you're building a road trip around it, this corner of the Houston area pairs naturally with the region's deep aviation and space heritage; you are, after all, in the part of Texas where America eventually reached for the Moon. Come for the historic marker, and let it frame the living airfield around you as one long, unbroken story of flight.
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
- · Eric Lamar Ellington
Related events
- · World War I
- · World War II
Themes & tags
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