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″N87°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]
Cicero is a town in Cook County, Illinois, United States, and a suburb of Chicago. As of the 2020 census, the population was 85,268, making it the 11th-most populous municipality in Illinois. The town is named after Marcus Tullius Cicero, a Roman statesman and orator. With over 89% of the town being of Hispanic descent, the town is the most Hispanic in the state of Illinois.
The Curtiss JN "Jenny" was a series of biplanes built by the Glenn Curtiss Aeroplane Company of Hammondsport, New York, later the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company. Although the Curtiss JN series was originally produced as a training aircraft for the US Army, the "Jenny" continued after World War I as a civilian aircraft, becoming the "backbone of American postwar [civil] aviation".
The Aerial Experiment Association (AEA) was a Canadian-American aeronautical research group formed on 30 September 1907, under the leadership of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell.
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1911:
Roosevelt Field is a former airport, located in Westbury, Long Island, New York. Originally called the Hempstead Plains Aerodrome, or sometimes Hempstead Plains field or the Garden City Aerodrome, it was a training field for the Air Service, United States Army during World War I.
Lincoln Beachey was a pioneer American aviator and barnstormer. He became famous and wealthy from flying exhibitions, staging aerial stunts, helping invent aerobatics, and setting aviation records.
Hendon Aerodrome was an aerodrome in London, England, that was an important centre for aviation from 1908 to 1968.
Thomas Scott Baldwin was a pioneer balloonist and U.S. Army major during World War I. He was the first American to descend from a balloon by parachute.
Katherine Stinson was an American aviation pioneer who, in 1912, became the fourth woman in the United States to earn the FAI pilot certificate. She set flying records for aerobatic maneuvers, distance, and endurance. She was the first female pilot employed by the U.S. Postal Service and the first civilian pilot to fly the mail in Canada. She was also one of the first pilots to ever fly at night and the first female pilot to fly in Canada and Japan.
College Park Airport is a public airport located in the City of College Park, in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States. It is the world's oldest continuously operated airport. The airport is located south of Paint Branch and Lake Artemesia, east of U.S. Route 1 and the College Park Metro/MARC station and west of Kenilworth Avenue.
Otto William Timm was a California-based barnstormer and aircraft manufacturer of German descent. Charles Lindbergh's first flight was flown by Timm. Timm partnered at times with his brother Wally Timm who did a lot of flying for the nascent Hollywood movie industry.
Claude Grahame-White was an English pioneer of aviation, and the first to make a night flight, during the Daily Mail-sponsored 1910 London to Manchester air race.
The Curtiss Flying School was started by Glenn Curtiss to compete against the Wright Flying School of the Wright brothers. The first example was located in San Diego, California.
Hans-Joachim Buddecke was a German flying ace in World War I, credited with thirteen victories. He was the third ace, after Max Immelmann and Oswald Boelcke, to earn the Blue Max. He saw combat in three theaters during the First World War: Bulgaria, Turkey, and the Western Front. His exploits at Gallipoli arena won him the nickname El-Schahin, "hunter falcon".
Carlstrom Field is a former military airfield, located 6.4 miles (10.3 km) southeast of Arcadia, Florida. The airfield was one of thirty-two Air Service training camps established in 1917 after the United States entry into World War I.
Thomas W. Benoist was an American aviator and aircraft manufacturer. In an aviation career of only ten years, he formed the world's first aircraft parts distribution company, established one of the leading early American aircraft manufacturing companies and a successful flying school, and from January to April 1914 operated the world's first scheduled airline.
Farnum Thayer Fish was an early American airplane pilot known as the "Boy Aviator". He was, at the age of 15, the "youngest licensed aviator in the world".
The pioneer era of aviation was the period of aviation history between the first successful powered flight, generally accepted to have been made by the Wright Brothers on 17 December 1903, and the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914.
Curtiss LaQ Day Jr. was an American aviator during the pioneer era. Throughout his teenage and young adult life, Day constructed planes, created a company, flew in exhibitions, taught at prominent aviation schools, and served in the United States military before leaving the field in the mid 1920s. He was once said to be youngest person in the United States to hold a pilot's license from the Aero Club of America.
The Nassau Boulevard Airfield, or the Nassau Boulevard Aerodrome, was a short-lived airfield located at Garden City, Long Island, New York, in operation from 1910 to 1913.
The day before his two-day exhibition flights at the Hawthorne Race Track in Cicero, Illinois, on October 16 and 17, 1909, Glenn Curtiss spoke to the Chicago Automobile Club and suggested that an aero club be formed in Chicago. In response to his remarks, the Aero Club of Illinois ("A. C. I. ") was incorporated on February 10, 1910, with Octave Chanute as its first president - a perfect choice, to be sure.
On April 16, 1916, when "Matty" Laird took off from Cicero Flying Field, at the controls of his self-designed and self-built Boneshaker biplane and flew to the new Partridge & Keller aviation field at 87th St. and Pulaski Road, in Chicago, Cicero Flying Field ceased to be. The next day, the Aero Club of Illinois (A.C.I.) officially opened its new 640 acre Ashburn Field on land purchased by A.C.I. President "Pop" Dickinson for the A.C.I.. Ashburn was located at 83rd St. and Cicero Avenue, about 7-1/2 miles almost due south of Cicero. All of the hangars and buildings at Cicero had been moved to Ashburn Field some months earlier.