Colorado Springs Airport - History

History

The airport was founded in 1927, the same year Charles Lindbergh made his transatlantic flight. Originally the airport covered an area of 640 acres (2.6 km²) and had two gravel runways. By the late 1930s the first passenger traffic was flowing through the airport on a flight that ran from El Paso, Texas, through Pueblo, Colorado Springs, and Denver, then back again. The original site was the present day location of the northern municipal power plant, east of Nevada Avenue and south of Winters Street. The first terminal was built in 1940 in an art deco style.

Soon after the terminal was built, the field was taken over by the military in the months preceding World War II. After the war, the city regained operations at the airport.

In 1966, a new terminal was built on the west side of the runways, at a new site east of Colorado Springs beyond Powers Boulevard. This terminal was expanded several times throughout the 1970s and 80s. By 1991, the airport consisted of three 150-foot (46 m) wide runways, one of which had a length of 13,501 feet (4,115 m), making it the longest runway in Colorado until 16R/34L, a 16,000-foot (4,900 m) long runway, opened at Denver International Airport in September 2003. By 1991, the old terminal could no longer handle the increasing passenger traffic, and the city approved the building of a new terminal on the south side of the airfield.

The new terminal, a 280,000-square-foot (26,000 m2), 17-gate facility designed by the Van Sant Group cost $140 million dollars to build. It was opened on October 22, 1994.