History
In 1940, Kearney had a population of 9,643 people. In the early 1940s, three Nebraska cities, Kearney, Grand Island and Hastings joined together to form the Central Nebraska Defense Council when it was learned that the United States Army Air Forces was considering the site for a military airfield. The group attempted to convince Washington that central Nebraska was a suitable location for defense related activities. Kearney and Grand Island effectively competed with one another as locations for defense airports which would serve as storage for aircraft being produced at Offutt Field and the Glenn L. Martin Bomber Plant near Omaha.
As early as 1941 the City of Kearney voted on a $60,000 bond to finance a new airport. Kearney Regional Airport began as Keens Municipal Airport. The total cost ended up being more than $360,000, with the balance funded by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Construction began at the site five miles east of Kearney on Highway 30 on 21 October 1941, and was dedicated as Keens Airport on 23 August 1942, with asphalt runways and a single hangar
Read more about this topic: Kearney Air Force Base
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“The history of literature—take the net result of Tiraboshi, Warton, or Schlegel,—is a sum of a very few ideas, and of very few original tales,—all the rest being variation of these.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)