History
Cedar Rapids' first airport was Hunter Field, a private airport established by Dan Hunter in the 1920s. It was located along Bowling Street SW north of U.S. Highway 30. The airport was originally used for private charter service, pilot training, and airmail, but it was inoperable during bad weather. This led to the need for a new airport.
The Cedar Rapids Municipal Airport was completed with military funding in 1944 but was not officially dedicated until April 27, 1947. The Cedar Rapids Parks Department operated the airport until a new Airport Commission was established in 1945; Donald Hines, who led the effort to build the airport, was the commission's director until he retired in 1973 (he died in 1975). Scheduled east-west passenger service from United Airlines began in 1947, and north-south passenger service from Ozark Airlines began in 1957. By 1969, the airport handled 31 commercial flights per day and recorded 353,000 passengers a year.
The present terminal designed by Brown, Healey, Bock Architects and Planners was dedicated in 1986 with a ceremony that U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole attended. The Cedar Rapids Airport was renamed The Eastern Iowa Airport in 1997 in order to reflect its status as a regional airport. In 2000 the airport enplaned and deplaned one million passengers for the first time in its history; it set a record in 2005 with 1,004,434 passengers.
Read more about this topic: The Eastern Iowa Airport
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“... all big changes in human history have been arrived at slowly and through many compromises.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)