History
It began in 1926 when Harold Frederick Pitcairn constructed a hangar and a grass airstrip in Horsham, Pennsylvania. The name "Willow Grove" came from the nearest town. At the time, Horsham was a rural township with little significance. From 1926 to 1942 Pitcairn used the airfield for design, construction and testing of a number of aircraft, including the Mailwing which was used by the United States Postal Service.
After the start of World War II, the United States purchased the grounds, and launched a classified anti-submarine warfare program at the base. Following World War II and into the Cold War, it became an operational and training bases for aviation activities of the Naval Reserve, Marine Corps Reserve, Air Force Reserve, Air National Guard, Army Reserve and Army National Guard. As part of its joint recruitment efforts, the base was an annual host to one of the largest air shows on the East Coast until 2006.
Read more about this topic: Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Willow Grove
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“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)
“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)