December 19--Mills Field

[zyzyly]

I forgot to post last night because someone posted a picture on Facebook from the late 1920s, of the airfield that later became the San Francisco Airport. It was nothing more than a few buildings and a gravel runway near the old highway. So naturally, I had to spend hours in the airport's archives to see how it grew into the international airport it is today.



Here is the image. The archives say that after it opened, the airfield had about 20 flights a month.

Here is another view, from the air:



The area at the top left, where the road curves, is where the current airport is located. Both the above images are courtesy of the SFO archives.

Here is a current picture:



(Photo courtesy of Callbookaddict at English Wikipedia, under a Creative Commons license)

The site of the original airfield is where the buildings along the freeway in the lower left side of the image are, just above the green area. The current terminals and runways are all built on landfill over the bay. Part of the original design of the airport included a seaplane harbor, which was used by Pan Am and other airlines for trans-Pacific flights. You can see it in the upper left.

This stuff fascinates me.

Comments

[luscious_purple]

Your entry made me look up SFO and Mills College history to see if the two were related, but apparently not. (The younger daughter of my Palo Alto friends is studying biochemistry at Mills College.)

[basefinder]

I recommend this site for checking out old airports:

http://www.airfields-freeman.com/

[randomdreams]

Man, that's a rough-looking landing strip.