Original Lubbock Municipal Airport
Lubbock, Lubbock County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927 dramatically increased worldwide interest in aviation. To participate in this new and potentially significant technology, the City of Lubbock established a municipal airport about five miles north of downtown. Land was purchased in 1929 and a brick hangar with Art Deco features was completed in 1930. The small airport was in operation by the end of that year. A well-known contractor in the area, W.G. McMillan Construction Company, was awarded the contract to construct the hangar. When completed, the building featured solid masonry construction, with cast concrete details and parapet caps on the front and south facades to add style to the utilitarian structure. The main portion of the hangar was a curved roof design supported by steel truss girders. The airport primarily served local aviation needs but was periodically utilized by the military, with rare commercial flights. Grass landing strips were used until the mid-1930s. In 1938, a federal grant from the works progress administration (WPA) led to the construction of concrete runways adjacent to the hangar. In the late 1930s or early 1940s, a second hangar made of sheet metal was added to the complex. In 1941, as the U.S. prepared to enter World War II, the city offered the army the use of the municipal airport. The South Plains Army Flying School (later South Plains Army Airfield, or SPAAF) operated here from 1942 to 1945 as an advanced training base for the U.S. army air force (USAAF) Combat Glider Training Program. In 1948, the city regained control of the airport and a new terminal building opened north of this building in 1950.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Charles Lindbergh's 1927 solo Atlantic flight set off a nationwide aviation fever, and Lubbock answered by buying land north of town and completing a stylish art deco brick hangar in 1930. A WPA grant paved concrete runways in 1938, and as the nation edged toward World War II the city handed the field to the Army, where the South Plains Army Airfield trained glider pilots for the USAAF from 1942 to 1945. The city reclaimed the airport after the war and opened a new terminal in 1950.
Why it matters
The little hangar traces the arc of American flight from barnstorming novelty to a decisive tool of national defense, all in a single West Texas structure.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Charles Lindbergh
- · W. G. McMillan Construction Company
Related events
- · Combat Glider Training Program
- · South Plains Army Airfield
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Breedlove Airport
Lubbock, TX
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.
South Plains Army Air Field
Lubbock, TX
During World War II, the Army leased and expanded Lubbock's municipal airport into the South Plains Army Air Field, a leading center for training combat glider pilots. Here men learned to fly the engineless Waco CG-4A, the workhorse glider that carried troops silently behind enemy lines. Remarkably, the field trained nearly 80% of America's combat glider pilots, who went on to fly in the D-Day landings, Operation Market Garden, and the crossing of the Rhine. Its story is now told at the Silent Wings Museum on this site.
Dagley Field
Lubbock, TX
On the eve of World War II, the United States realized it would need pilots by the thousands and launched the Civilian Pilot Training Program to turn college students into aviators. At Texas Technological College in Lubbock, roughly 6,500 cadets moved through the program, and half of them took to the air from this dirt-runway field run by local flyer 'Dag' Dagley. When the war's demand for pilots faded, the field closed and its quarter-section became the College Heights neighborhood.
Reese Air Force Base
Lubbock, TX
After a decade of lobbying by Lubbock officials, an Army Air Corps advanced flying school opened west of the city in January 1942, replacing cotton fields with barracks and runways. As the Lubbock Army Flying School it trained more than 7,000 pilots before deactivating in 1945, then reactivated in 1949 and was renamed for First Lt. Augustus F. Reese, Jr., a Shallowater native killed in action during World War II. Over a 56-year run, Reese Air Force Base sent more than 25,000 men and women — including hundreds from 40 allied nations — into the sky before its closure in the 1990s.