Ashburn Flying Field | |
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Summary | |
Airport type | General aviation |
Owner/Operator | Aero Club of Illinois |
Serves | Chicago, Illinois |
Location | 41°44′44.00″N 87°44′44.64″W / 41.7455556°N 87.7457333°W |
Opened | November 1916 |
Closed | 1939 |
Ashburn Flying Field was the first airport built, after the 1911-established aerodrome named Cicero Flying Field closed in April 1916, to serve Chicago, Illinois.[1] It opened in November 1916 in Ashburn, a community at the southwest corner of Chicago.[2] The airfield site was a marshy area approximately a square mile in size, and previously devoid of trees or buildings, before the Aero Club of Illinois, itself founded on February 10. 1910,[3] the organization that had operated the Cicero facility, moved its aerodrome's hangars and buildings to its new Ashburn Field facility some time before it had opened.[4] It was offered for the use of the US government by the Aero Club of Illinois,[5] The Ashburn facility's opening was shortly before the start of a pioneering airmail flight in 1916 by Victor Carlstrom, in a Curtiss biplane, from Chicago to New York City, sponsored by The New York Times.[6][7] During World War 1, it was a Signal Corps training camp. After the war, it had airmail contracts. It was supplanted by nearby Midway Airport as a major aviation center for Chicago. It closed in 1939. The site is now Scottsdale Shopping center and subdivision.[2]