News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The growth of air travel and the need to open up the Upper Cumberland led to the creation of Crossville Memorial Airport 90 years ago.
Retired Air Force Colonel Ben Welch is the Chairman of the Crossville Airport Committee. He said during the early 1930s, a group of local businessmen out saw aviation as a tool to help local economy. In 1934, the city negotiated with a local landowner for the area that the airport now sits on.
“People seem to get to thinking that they don’t need the airport because its too noisy and they shut it down and then all of the sudden they realize that, ‘uh oh, we’ve just done a terrible thing, and it’s costing us in many ways that we never anticipated it would cost’,” Welch said.
Welch said the airport started as a grass runway on flat land outside the city. The airport is now a stop-over and refueling station for jet aircrafts and an important part of the Upper Cumberland economy.
“We’ve still got the same rotating beacon tower out there but other than that, there’s not much recognizable from that first day that I came up here in 1946,” Welch said.
Welch said that a couple years ago the Tennessee Bureau of Commerce did an evaluation of the value the airport and what it adds to the area and determined that it was a multimillion dollar asset to the region. Welch said efforts to close the airport have been announced in a past local government campaign, but the runner did not get elected.
“Business coming to the airport comes to the city and the city profits from it, and prospers with it because people like the airport and they come to town, they spend the night, they go out and eat,” Welch said. “It’s a good thing.”
Welch said that of the hangars are currently full and there is a waiting list for the four that they are getting ready to build. Welch said that the four they will soon build will probably be occupied by businesses which will benefit the city.
“It’s probably the largest asset that the city owns,” Welch said.
On Saturday October 5, the airport will celebrate the 90-year anniversary. Welch said the event will feature a 1934 Stinson SR5 Reliant, a WWII P51 and a 2-seat open cockpit trainer, several homebuilt aircrafts, as well as other vintage aircrafts. There will also be food, bounce houses, a fly over, and merchandise booths.
The state of Tennessee had 23 airports in 1932, but the number grew exponentially during the 1930s thanks in part to depression-era work funded by the federal government.
