W. G. McMillan Construction Company
Lubbock, Lubbock County, Texas
Marker Inscription
W.G. McMillan came to Lubbock in 1924 to assist in the construction of the Hotel Lubbock. McMillan stayed, and over the next thirty years oversaw over 850 construction projects. Some of McMillan’s first projects included the 1926 Conoco service station, followed by completion of the Meadowbrook Golf Course. In 1930, McMillan completed the Lubbock Municipal Airport that still exists today. During World War II, McMillan played a significant role in the local war effort and the wartime history of Texas. In 1942, McMillan built 220 structures at South Plains Army Air Field, where glider pilots prepared for D-day and other invasions. Under McMillan and his son, numerous additional buildings were constructed on military bases and air fields in the area. The McMillan Construction Company (later known as McMillan and Son Construction Company) completed a multitude of projects, including airports, schools, public buildings, hospitals, grocery stores, churches, sporting venues, and numerous buildings on the Texas Tech campus. In addition to construction projects, W.G. McMillan also served the community through social, educational, and political organizations. McMillan was a member of the Kiwanis Club and Methodist Church, helped form the Plains Museum Society (later called the West Texas Museum Association) and constructed the original museum building in 1936. He participated in archeological digs, hunting expeditions, and community service projects. The W.G. McMillan construction company performed a significant and contributing role in the economic, physical, and commercial development of Lubbock. 175 Years of Texas Independence * 1836-2011
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
W.G. McMillan arrived in Lubbock in 1924 to help build the Hotel Lubbock and stayed to oversee more than 850 projects over three decades, from a 1926 service station to the municipal airport still in use. During World War II he built 220 structures at South Plains Army Air Field, where glider pilots trained for D-Day and other invasions, tying his firm directly to the war effort. Beyond construction, he helped found the region's museum society and served in civic life across the South Plains.
Why it matters
His buildings — schools, hospitals, campuses, and wartime airfields — physically shaped a West Texas city and show how local builders powered both community growth and the national mobilization for World War II.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early twentieth century, Lubbock was a young town on the flat, wind-scoured expanse of the Texas South Plains, growing up around the railroad and the cotton and cattle economy of the Llano Estacado. When W.G. McMillan arrived in 1924, the community was in the middle of a building boom, transforming from a frontier crossroads into a proper city with hotels, paved streets, and civic ambitions.
This was the era when West Texas towns were racing to prove themselves modern. A new hotel, a golf course, a municipal airport — these were the markers of a place that had arrived, and someone had to actually put up the walls and pour the foundations. McMillan landed in exactly the right place at the right time, when a builder with skill and stamina could shape the physical face of a whole region.
The decades that followed carried Lubbock through the growth of the 1920s, the hardship of the Depression, and then the enormous mobilization of the Second World War, which reached deep into the plains of Texas. A single construction firm working across all those years leaves fingerprints on nearly every chapter of a city's life.
People & events
W.G. McMillan came to Lubbock in 1924 for a single job — helping to build the Hotel Lubbock — and then simply never left. Over the next thirty years he oversaw more than 850 construction projects, a staggering output for one builder in one region. His early work reads like a checklist of a town coming of age: a service station in 1926, the completion of the Meadowbrook Golf Course, and in 1930 the Lubbock Municipal Airport, a facility still in use today.
When the war came, McMillan turned his crews to the national effort. In 1942 he built 220 structures at South Plains Army Air Field, the base where glider pilots trained for the airborne assaults of the war, including the invasion of Normandy on D-Day. Working alongside his son, he went on to raise still more buildings on military bases and airfields across the area — the unglamorous but essential work of housing, training, and equipping a wartime force.
McMillan was more than a contractor, though. He helped form the Plains Museum Society — later the West Texas Museum Association — and built the original museum building in 1936. He belonged to the Kiwanis Club and the Methodist Church, joined archeological digs and hunting expeditions, and put up schools, hospitals, churches, grocery stores, sporting venues, and numerous buildings on the Texas Tech campus. His was a life spent quite literally constructing a community.
Its place in the American story
McMillan's story is a window into how America actually got built — not only by famous architects and federal planners, but by local builders whose names rarely leave their home counties. The schools, hospitals, and public buildings that anchor a city's daily life are the work of people like him, and the physical growth of the American West rode on thousands of such careers.
His wartime work connects a single Texas firm directly to one of the largest mobilizations in human history. When the United States raised training bases across the country almost overnight, it needed builders who could produce hundreds of structures fast. The glider pilots who trained on ground McMillan prepared went on to fly into occupied Europe, tying a Lubbock construction crew to the beaches and fields of the D-Day invasion.
That link — from a hometown contractor to a global conflict — captures something essential about the American home front. Victory was assembled not only overseas but in workshops, factories, and building sites far from the fighting, by people who never wore a uflorm.
If you visit
Stand at this spot and let yourself look outward rather than down at the marker. So much of what you can see and drive to in Lubbock passed through the hands of one builder and his son, so the whole city becomes, in a sense, the monument.
Make a little driving tour of it. The municipal airport, dating to 1930, is still in service. Wander the Texas Tech campus and know that numerous buildings there rose under McMillan's supervision. If your travels take you toward the sites tied to South Plains Army Air Field, you're near the ground where glider crews trained for the great invasions.
This is a good stop for anyone who likes history that hides in plain sight. There's no dramatic battlefield or grand mansion here — just the quiet realization that ordinary streets, schools, and hangars are themselves a kind of history, and that behind them stands a person who spent thirty years shaping a corner of West Texas.
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
- · W.G. McMillan
Related events
- · South Plains Army Air Field
- · D-Day
Themes & tags
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South Plains Army Air Field
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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.
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