Site of Marfa Army Air Field
Marfa, Presidio County, Texas
Marker Inscription
During World War II, the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) established a significant number of training airfields across the state of Texas. The USAAF Western Flying Training Command selected Marfa as the site for an advanced multi-engine flying school in 1942. Due to an initial lack of supplies and properly trained personnel, the USAAF struggled at first to establish the command effectively and to provide adequate housing for those who served here. The airfield had four hangars, five runways and a unique angled parking apron. There were also several auxiliary fields in the area. Support personnel here included a Women's Army Corps unit established in 1943 and African American troops, assigned primarily to motor pool duties. Trainees included allied Chinese flying cadets, the first class arriving in September 1944. After Germany surrendered in May 1945, the USAAF considered deactivating Marfa Army Air Field and placed the installation on standby status. However, the need for additional transport aircraft in the Pacific campaign temporarily extended the mission of the airfield. In June 1945, the USAAF placed the airfield in the Troop Carrier Command as home of the 818th Army Air Forces Base. The USAAF formally deactivated the base in September 1945, and the gradual exodus of the military had a devastating impact on Marfa. The military sold off buildings, many later used for civilian purposes in Marfa, Alpine and other locales. Today, all that remains of the once impressive site are foundations, runways and the memories of those who proudly supported the airfield during the war. Texas in World War II - 2007
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
During World War II, the Army Air Forces blanketed Texas with training fields, and in 1942 chose Marfa for an advanced multi-engine flying school. Despite early shortages, the field grew to four hangars and five runways, training pilots—including Chinese allied cadets from 1944—and hosting a Women's Army Corps unit and African American support troops. Deactivated in September 1945, the base's closure dealt a heavy blow to the town, leaving only foundations and runways behind.
Why it matters
Marfa Army Air Field was one link in the vast aviation training network that helped win World War II, and its rise and abrupt closure shaped the fortunes of a remote West Texas town.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When the United States entered World War II, it faced an enormous, urgent problem: it needed to turn tens of thousands of young civilians into military pilots, fast. Texas, with its wide-open spaces, flat terrain, and famously clear skies, became one of the nation's great classrooms of the air. Training fields sprouted across the state, and the sound of aircraft engines became the soundtrack of the home front.
Far out in the high desert of West Texas, near the small town of Marfa in Presidio County, the Army Air Forces found exactly the kind of empty, open country they needed. In 1942 the Western Flying Training Command selected Marfa for an advanced multi-engine flying school — the place where pilots already past their first lessons would master the bigger, more demanding aircraft the war required.
But remoteness cut both ways. The same isolation that made the skies ideal made everything else hard. In its early days the field struggled with shortages of supplies and trained personnel, and with the basic challenge of housing everyone who came to serve in a town that had never expected them.
People & events
Out of that rough start rose a real airfield: four hangars, five runways, and a distinctive angled parking apron, supported by several auxiliary fields scattered across the surrounding country. It became a small military city in the desert.
The people who filled it were more varied than the West Texas setting might suggest. A Women's Army Corps unit was established here in 1943, part of the wartime expansion that brought women into uniform in growing numbers. African American troops served as well, assigned primarily to motor pool duties — a reminder that even a shared war effort was organized along the segregated lines of the era. And beginning in September 1944, the field trained allied Chinese flying cadets, foreign airmen learning their craft on the Texas plains as part of a global alliance.
The war's end reached Marfa in stages. After Germany surrendered in May 1945, the Army Air Forces considered shutting the field down and placed it on standby. Then the demands of the Pacific campaign — a hunger for transport aircraft — gave it a brief second life: in June 1945 it joined the Troop Carrier Command as home of the 818th Army Air Forces Base. The reprieve was short. The base was formally deactivated in September 1945.
Its place in the American story
Marfa Army Air Field was never the most famous base of the war, and that is precisely why it matters. Victory in the air was built on a vast, unglamorous network of training fields exactly like this one — places that produced the skilled crews without whom the celebrated missions could never have flown. The story of American air power is, in large part, the story of these classrooms.
The field also gathered, in one remote spot, many of the larger currents of the war: women stepping into military service, Black soldiers serving a nation that still segregated them, and allied cadets from across the world training side by side with Americans. A small West Texas airfield became a crossroads of the global conflict.
And its abrupt closing tells another enduring American story — what happens to a small town when the government that built it up suddenly leaves. The military sold off Marfa's buildings, many of which found new civilian life in Marfa, Alpine, and beyond, but the departure left a lasting mark on a community that had briefly boomed.
If you visit
Don't come expecting hangars and control towers. Come expecting the eloquence of what's left: foundations, stretches of runway, and the wide silence of the high desert reclaiming what was once a busy field. The emptiness is part of the history — it shows you, better than any building could, how completely the war arrived and then withdrew.
Stand where the runways run and imagine the angled parking apron, the four hangars, the multi-engine trainers taxiing under that enormous sky, and the mix of people who briefly called this place home. Reading the marker here, with nothing but horizon around you, makes the rise-and-fall of the field feel immediate.
Marfa today is better known as an unlikely arts destination, which makes this site a quiet counterpoint on any West Texas road trip — a chance to trace the town's earlier, wartime chapter. Give yourself time for the drive and the distances; out here, the space itself is the exhibit.
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 events
- · World War II
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