Remnants of ghost towns are a familiar sight across the northern Arizona landscape, but relics from aviation history are also present.
The earliest flying infrastructure consisted of giant concrete arrows, dating back to around 1920. These served as primitive route markers for pilots - and some are rumoured to still exist around Winslow.
While many old airfields are now only visible as faint ghostly landing strips, occasionally there are more obvious remains, like in the Tusayan and Kingman areas.
On the edge of the meadow at Red Butte, a few miles south of Tusayan, sits an old hangar. It was here, in 1927, that former World War One Army flyer - Parker Van Zandt - built an airport for Scenic Airways – the first commercial air tour operator over the Grand Canyon.
Kingman’s first airfield, built in 1918, is now a cemetery. And in 1929, a second Kingman airport was opened as part of the pioneering Transcontinental Air Transport network. It was an event considered so important that aviator Amelia Earhardt was present for the ribbon-cutting ceremony. That terminal building still survives – although it’s now used as offices by a drilling company.
The Kingman Army Airfield, built in 1942 became home to one of the nation’s largest gunnery schools during World War II. Next to the present-day city-owned Kingman airport, some of the original wartime hangars and historic control tower survive. In 2019, a local air club arranged a fly by the “Flying Fortress”, one of the few B-17 bombers still functioning.
