Maynard Field
Winston-Salem, Forsyth County, North Carolina
Marker Inscription
Maynard Field - Operating from 1919 until the mid-1930's, Maynard Field was the first commercial airfield in North Carolina. The airfield was named for Lt. Belvin W. Maynard, a North Carolina native and pioneer aviator. In October 1919, the...… transcription continues on the marker
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The Story
Opened in 1919, Maynard Field was North Carolina's first commercial airfield, operating on the edge of Winston-Salem until the mid-1930s. It was named for Lt. Belvin W. Maynard, a North Carolina native and celebrated early aviator. The field belongs to the barnstorming dawn of American aviation, when former military flyers turned open ground into the country's first airports.
Why it matters
Maynard Field marks the moment flight came to the Carolinas, part of the nationwide leap from wartime aviation to everyday commercial air travel.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1919, aviation in America stood at a thrilling, uncertain threshold. The First World War had just ended, and with it came a surplus of trained pilots and surplus aircraft, but as yet very little in the way of the airports, airlines, and routines we now take for granted. Flight was still an adventure more than an industry.
Winston-Salem, in the North Carolina Piedmont, was a growing, prosperous city in those years. When Maynard Field opened on its edge in 1919, it planted the state firmly in this dawning age of flight, giving the Carolinas their first commercial airfield at the very moment the country was learning what to do with the airplane in peacetime.
The field operated into the mid-1930s — a stretch that spans the whole barnstorming era, when former military flyers turned open pastures into landing grounds and stunned crowds with feats of daring. It belongs to the generation that carried aviation from wartime novelty toward everyday travel.
People & events
The field took its name from Lt. Belvin W. Maynard, a North Carolina native and celebrated pioneer aviator. To name the state's first commercial airfield for him was to honor one of the region's own in the young, glamorous world of flight.
Maynard was known in his day as a pioneering flyer, the kind of figure who captured the public imagination in an era when aviators were popular heroes. Naming the field for him tied this patch of Winston-Salem ground to that larger romance of early aviation.
The marker notes that in October 1919 something occurred at or in connection with the field — the inscription there breaks off — but the date itself locates the site squarely in aviation's formative first postwar year. What's certain is that from 1919 into the mid-1930s, this was a working airfield, a place where the Carolinas first met the airplane on the ground.
Its place in the American story
Maynard Field marks the moment powered flight took root in the Carolinas, and in doing so it connects one Piedmont city to a sweeping national story. Across the country in these same years, Americans were converting the aircraft and airmen of wartime into the beginnings of a commercial aviation system.
The leap was enormous: from open fields and daredevil exhibitions to scheduled flights, mapped air routes, and, eventually, ordinary air travel. First-generation airfields like this one were the essential physical infrastructure of that transformation — the places where the abstract promise of flight touched actual ground.
That Winston-Salem could claim the state's first commercial airfield speaks to how widely, and how quickly, aviation spread beyond a few famous centers. The story of American flight is not only Kitty Hawk and the great cities; it runs through hundreds of local fields like this one.
If you visit
Maynard Field ceased operating in the mid-1930s, so don't expect an airport — expect a historic site marking where one of the region's first airfields once lay on the edge of Winston-Salem. The pleasure here is imaginative: standing on ordinary modern ground and picturing open grass, canvas-and-wood aircraft, and crowds craning upward.
Read the marker closely for the details it does give — the operating years, and the aviator whose name the field carried. Let it set the scene of an era when a flight was still an event worth gathering to watch.
A stop here fits naturally into a wider tour of Winston-Salem's history, a city with deep roots and plenty to explore. Treat Maynard Field as a quiet reminder that the age of flight arrived not only in famous places, but right here in the Piedmont.
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
- · Lt. Belvin W. Maynard
Themes & tags
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