Let’s remember when the first airplane flew into Snohomish County Airport, on this day in 1937 (September 14)
It was still a few years from opening, but it was proven 82 years ago that it was possible for airplanes to fly into the forthcoming Snohomish County Airport.
HistoryLink’s Margaret Riddle says:
On September 14, 1937, a hot summer day with temperatures hovering around 95 degrees, a small, private, two-seated monoplane makes an emergency landing at the Snohomish County Airport, which is under construction near Everett. The landing surprises the airport ground crew and precedes the airport’s 1939 opening.
One of Snohomish County’s largest work relief projects during the Great Depression was the building of a first-class airport that eventually became Paine Field. Construction began in 1936 and in the fall of 1937 an additional sum of $225,000 in federal funds was requested to complete work on the 1,000-acre airport. Washington State WPA administrator Don G. Abel estimated that the emergency runway would be completed by year’s end.
Only the worst humps on the 1,500-yard emergency runway had been smoothed when on September 14, 1937, commercial pilot Mark E. Thorley of Seattle discovered his plane was overheating. He and passenger E. Lasher, a radio operator at Boeing field, had intended to land at the Everett airport on Ebey Island, but that was still miles away.
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