Idaho Falls Regional Airport – Idaho Falls ID

Description

NPS.gov:
“The Idaho Falls Airport Historic District was constructed by the Works Project Administration (WPA). The WPA in Idaho, and across the country, placed a high priority on airport and airway projects, both to support the new and booming air transport business and to better prepare local facilities for anticipated national defense needs. In 1935, the City of Idaho Falls partnered with the WPA to produce the plans and funding needed to build a true airport in Idaho Falls. The hangar and administrator’s cabin were built in 1936 of hand-hewn, peeled, native white pine. The hangar provided for maintenance, repair and shelter for aircraft, as well as support for the pilots. Its interior space was divided between the airplane storage and maintenance area and the small administrative area. The gable-roof building contained two, 40-foot doors segmented into eight, five-foot panels with one window in each panel. The cabin is a single-story, hipped-roof, rectangular building with a single-bay garage and small workshop built into the basement. The beacon tower is a simple, four-sided building rising 67 feet above the surrounding landscape, with four legs spread nine and one-half feet square and stands on a two-foot-high mound of soil. The airport facilities were completed by 1937, including extended and improved runways and new underground fueling tanks and pumps. On June 8, 1938, the Idaho Falls Municipal Airport was given its first operation permit. By 1941, the WPA helped build two new Idaho airports and had improved three others as part of a national program that pumped over $200 million into airport facilities across the country.”