By John Lauritsen
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ST. PAUL, Minnesota (WCCO) — The St. Paul Airport turns 100-years-old this month. In the last century, the airport helped with the war effort and also played a major role in Twin Cities flight.
“We’ve got California, Florida, Alaska. We’ve had international flights from Spain, Portugal,” said Jack Carroll, general manager of the St. Paul Flight Center.
At the St. Paul Airport, no two days are the same. Military and private aircraft bring in service members and celebrities. And when the Super Bowl was here, it was all hands on deck.
“It was the busiest day in the airport’s history. Literally, they shut down two of the three runways. There were airplanes parked on every available piece of laptop,” said Carroll.
It’s just part of the airport’s long runway of memories.
“Air mail. That’s the overriding story,” said Bruce Kitt, Northwest Airlines History Center.
Kitt said a century ago, Minneapolis and St. Paul were competing to be the air mail destination from Chicago to the Twin Cities.
“Neither one of them could agree so they both built up their airports, and like a ping pong ball, service bounced between each one. And then it eventually wound up at MSP,” said Kitt.
But St. Paul’s success was only slightly delayed. In 1930, Northwest Airways moved its fleet to the airport, which was also known as Holman Field — named after Charles “Speed” Holman. He was the first pilot hired by the airline and also doubled as a stunt pilot.
Sadly, Holman died in 1931 while performing a stunt at an airshow in Omaha, Nebraska. But his name lives on.
In 1939, the Holman terminal was built, and three years later the Riverside Hangars were added. The government took those over during World War II so they could modify B-24 bomber planes.
When it was really busy, they would run four lines of bombers. Two in each hangar. They modified over 3,300 B-24s during the war,” said Kitt.
Kitt says when the war ended, things changed. Legacy carriers were going to Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport because of the longer runways, while Holman Field attracted regional airlines.
Over the decades, St. Paul has proven resilient. More than once in the 1990’s, flooding temporarily grounded operations, but they always came back.
As a result, years ago they built a flood wall to keep the rising waters of the Mississippi River from getting on the runway.
It’s held up well. Kitt often wonders what might have been for Holman Field if history hadn’t gotten in the way.
“It would be interesting to speculate, what if the war never occurred? Then what would have the city rivalries have been?”
Like MSP, the St. Paul Airport is run by the Metropolitan Airports Commission. Each year there more than 40,000 takeoffs and landings happen in St. Paul.
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