D.C. MEMORIES The first time I landed at Washington,D C's then "new" National Airport built at Gravelly Point about four down the Potomac River from the nation's capital, I felt we were,for sure, going to land in the river. The airport was built out into the stream and the approach was all to low over wet stuff. Just time, however,dry land turned up ands we made of it.
Moments earlier I had been thinking we would be landing on a site on which in 1746, a man named Captain John Alexander built a mansion which he named "Abingdon". Actually the site was on he shore at the the end of the man-made island where the nation's air craft would now be using. He lived in that house and a descendant of his Phillip Alexander later donate land he inherited on which much of a new city called Alexander - in his honor - was founded. The historic home was purchased by John Parke Custis in 1778. It was here that Eleanor "Nelly" Parke Curtis, stepdaughter of George Washington was born.
When building the new airport facilities the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority preserved many of the artifacts found in the ruins of the old mansion when it burned in l930. They can be examined today at the exhibit Hall in the Terminal A.
As I recall, airport facilities in Washington, D.C. were dismal in the days before Washington National got going. There may have been some small "landing fields" in the general area bit the only one I can recall seeing an using was called "Hoover Field" and it was a grass and dirt strip right beside highway. can remember old Curtis-Wright "Jenneys" offering "Joy Rides" for visitors willing to try. "Hoover Field" was opened in 1926 and was the only airport I ever knew which had a city street intersecting its one and only runway. Guards on duty there had to stop motor traffic with each takeoff or landing of planes.
"Hoover Field" did so well that the following year - 1927 - a second ,privately owned airfield opened right next to it. The two airports merged to become - Washington-Hoover Airport in 1930 when the Great Depression years took over. There was some operation there years later because I remember taking a "Goodyear" Blimp from that site.
"Reagan National" has prospered well in spite of noise abatement and crowding problems.
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 6-30-06 [c420wds]
