Four airlines now fly in and out of the Central Illinois Regional Airport [CIRA]. They carried about 325,000 passengers last year. It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when the airport that served the Twin Cities had sod and gravel runways.
That changed during the Great Depression, a time where federal infrastructure and job creation dollars allowed the airport to start taxiing down the runway and eventually soar to become what it is today.
Commercial aviation started to take off after the first World War. Communities such as Bloomington-Normal competed to be on air routes for commercial carriers and to construct airports.
“This is a version of what occurred several generations earlier, in the 19th century, with railroads and the competition for rail lines and passenger stations. And since the golden age of aviation in the 1920s, we had the same kind of infrastructure overlay when it comes to state and federal highways and beginning in the 1950s with the interstate highway system. You could argue there's even a parallel today, ongoing with data centers and the electrical grid,” said Bill Kemp, librarian at the McLean County Museum of History.
Bloomington-Normal’s first airport was in north Normal, north of Northtown Road. Farmer Herman A. Will opened a stretch of 70+ acres in 1927. It had a six-plane hangar, filling pump, a wind cone and a large, graveled circle to indicate the location of an airport visible from above.
From 1931 to 1932, two commercial carriers, first Century Airlines and then American Airways, tried to make this facility a stop on their passenger routes.
“It doesn't work out. The airport is too small. The sod is too soggy to handle passenger aircraft. Those efforts are abandoned and aviation prospects in the Twin Cities languish for several years,” said Kemp.
Cue the Depression and President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, alphabet agencies included. The Civil Works Administration [CWA] was an early effort to stimulate the economy. The community applied for funding for an airport.
Money would be available if a local government agreed to own or lease at least 150 acres of land.
The city agreed to acquire or lease 164 acres from a group of businessmen along Rt. 9 where CIRA is today. It had formerly been the Corn Belt Nursery. The business group included State Farm founder G.J. Mecherle. Today CIRA is operated and owned by the Airport Authority, which is a taxing body. It has grown to around 2,000 acres.
The CWA chipped in $90,000, over $2 million in today’s dollars. Most of that went to local labor as part of the infrastructure stimulus package. The state of Illinois and the City of Bloomington also contributed money.
Between late 1933 and March 1934 the CWA and other New Deal projects put some four million Americans to work.
When the Bloomington Municipal Airport opened in Bloomington, it had two asphalt runways, each 75 by 1,500 feet, laid out diagonally.
Dedication of the airport
The airport was dedicated October 28, 1934, in one of the biggest events in city history up to that time.
“It's also the early age of the automobile. You had the greatest traffic jam in city history, with folks trying to get out and stuck on Rt. 9 to what is really an aviation air show that is occurring to celebrate the opening of the Bloomington Municipal Airport,” said Kemp.
Everyone and anyone in Central Illinois were at the airport the day of its dedication.
An article from the Pantagraph’s coverage of the dedication boasted a crowd of 60,000 people, flights by 83 planes and the appearance of Illinois Gov. Henry Horner.
“Central Illinois demonstrated its airmindedness by braving blustery cold weather Sunday to witness the elaborate program in connection with the dedication,” read the article.
“Traffic jam results the Bloomington port crowd was estimated at 60,000… clogs highways and secondary roads leading to the field indicated at least 10,000 others either deemed it impractical to attempt reaching the port or decided to witness the events from adjacent roads.”
Other lines of watchers stretched for more than three miles along Rt. 9. Pilots performed aerial shows including loops and rolls.
“…performed by Charles F Able, Chicago, in his motorless biplane glider, the astounding speed of Harold Newman, Moline, in his little white Howard racer and Art Carnahan, Bloomington, looping, rolling, diving, flying upside down, sky writing and other conventionally conducting himself and his monocoach in the air,” the article reads.
In his speech, Gov. Horner celebrated the airport as the next step forward in the history of aviation to which the state has so enthusiastically contributed.
“…and it is my happy privilege as your governor to join with you and officially dedicated the Bloomington Municipal Airport by assembling here, we, as representatives of the citizenship of our great progressive state of Illinois, pay tribute to and heartily thank those who untiring efforts have wrought the accomplishment this airport to keep your city and our state in the front ranks as the nation advances in science, industry and agriculture,” Horner said.
Horner noted the year-long collaboration required by citizens, local officials, aeronautics experts in the CWA and the federal government.
