- City:
- Idaho Falls, ID
- Site Type:
- Infrastructure and Utilities, Airports
- New Deal Agencies:
- Work Relief Programs, Works Progress Administration (WPA)
- Started:
- 1935
- Completed:
- 1937
- Quality of Information:
- Moderate
- Marked:
- Unknown
- Site Survival:
- Unknown
Description
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) built the original Idaho Falls airport in 1935-37. We do not know which, if any, of the historic structures remain.
“In 1935, the City of Idaho Falls partnered with the Works Project Administration (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.” (NPS)
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We welcome contributions of additional information on any New Deal site.
Submit More Information or Photographs for this New Deal Site
I have a photograph of my mother and grandparents sitting on a bench alongside a log building.
The right side appears to look similar to the photo of Idaho Falls WPA building. Are there more photos
to use for comparison? In the event it matches I would be honored to have this photo displayed with
this material.