OCR Text |
Show Airport Dedication Scheduled for Next Saturday, Sunday CITY, STATE AND COUNTY OFFICIALS' TO SPEAK AT CEREMONIES; HUNDREDS OF PLANES TO BE HERE ALL DAY From a cow-pasture, make-shift landing field used by the Army fliers as. a temporary airport when they flew the mail back in the early '30s, to one of the finest smalltown small-town landing fields in the west, is the story which will be told of the Milford airport at dedication ceremonies Sunday, Sun-day, October 10th. City, County and State officials, invited in-vited to the ceremonies, will be greeted by the Flying Farmers, private pilots from every corner of the state, a Western Airlines passenger ship, national guard planes, army planes from Hill Field, and possibly pos-sibly one of the new twin-jet jobs which streak through the skies with the speed of sound. , Special invitations have been mailed by E. L. Smith, mayor of the City of Milford, to Gov. Herbert B. Maw, Col. Joe Ber-gin, Ber-gin, state aeronautics director, who will fly his four-place Waco; C A A and CAB officials and Utah's "Flying Mayors," P. L. Jones of Nephi, G. L. Parry of Cedar City, Dr. G. B. Mad-sen Mad-sen of Mt. Pleasant, and Francis Feltch of Vernal, all city heads who own and pilot personal iplanes. The celebration will get under way with a free hangar dance Saturday evening, with Airport Manager Ben Hillman presiding over the festivities as visiting pilots and townspeople mingle to trip the light fantastic on the smooth concrete hangar floor. At 11:00 a. m. Sunday the Milford Lions and Chamber of Commerce will ring the dinner bell, tendering tender-ing a sumptious dinner to all visiting visi-ting pilots and officials. The dedication ceremonies under the direction of Mayor E. L. Smith, are scheduled for 2 p.m., Sunday. Col. Bergin, Governor Maw, and various government officials, army fliers and aviation experts are scheduled to make brief addresses. Recently completed by Ford and Ferguson of Provo, the airport air-port was built under joint city, state and federal sponsorship. An oiled runway, 100 feet wide by a mile long, occupies the center cen-ter of the port, running north and south. Flanked by 100 foot wide graveled shoulders, there are also two 300 by 150 foot warm-up aprons, and a taxi strip 50 feet wide by a mile long, enabling en-abling planes to taxi to and from the hangars while other traffic is using the landing strip. An , Airways Communication unit of the CAA is housed at the field, to give pilots weather and wind reports, takeoff and landing assistance, as-sistance, and other services. The field is well lighted, and is open to light and heavy ships 24 hours a day. More fortunate than most cities, the airport is but a mile from Milford, and is situated sit-uated on an oiled highway, making mak-ing commuting to and from the port a matter of but a few minutes. min-utes. First transient plane to land at preparing to "bail out" over the dry bed of Sevier Lake, a few miles to the north, when they the port after it was officially opened was a CAP BT, which made a "down-wind landing" as Col. Bergin and CAA officials were inspecting the runway. Costing about $53,000 for the present improvements, the Milford Mil-ford port has already "paid for itself," when it was used for an emergency landing a few days ago by a group of arniy fliers in a DC-4. Flying San Francisco to Denver, the ship was off course, and the occupants were picked up the Milford CAA radio station. Gliding in for a perfect landing on the new airstrip, there was less than ten gallons of gas in the tanks, not enough gas to circle the field for another landing had they overshot, when the ship finally was taxied to the gas pumps in front of the hangars. The army plane refueled re-fueled and continued to Hill Field at Ogden. |