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    Denver Airports: From Stapleton to DIA
    Denver Airports: From Stapleton to DIA
    Denver Airports: From Stapleton to DIA
    Ebook183 pages1 hour

    Denver Airports: From Stapleton to DIA

    By Jeffrey C. Price, Jeffrey S. Forrest, Shahn G. Sederberg and Ginger Sunday Evans

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    On the cusp of the Great Depression, Denver mayor Benjamin Stapleton pushed for the development of the first city-operated airport. Denver Municipal Airport opened in 1929 with three hub airlines. While Stapleton would be honored to later have the airport named after him, by the mid-1980s, the name Stapleton had become synonymous with congestion, flight delays, and frequent closures when the snow moved in. To solve the problem, Denver mayor Federico Peña envisioned a massive new airport, but when Denver International Airport (DIA) opened in 1995, its three hub airlines had whittled away to just one, and critics warned of dire consequences. Yet the airport persevered, and today, with its iconic tent roof, six runways, and 53 square miles of land, it stands amongst the most beautiful and busiest airports in the world. This is the story of three airports and how they brought the city from cow town to boomtown.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateApr 29, 2019
    ISBN9781439666944
    Denver Airports: From Stapleton to DIA
    Author

    Jeffrey C. Price

    Jeffrey C. Price and Jeffrey S. Forrest are both pilots and professors at the Metropolitan State University of Denver in the Department of Aviation and Aerospace Science. Shahn G. Sederberg is a professional aviation photographer who has gathered a collection of aviation photography of all 74 public-use airports in Colorado from the ground and air.

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      Book preview

      Denver Airports - Jeffrey C. Price

      (HR-DPL).

      INTRODUCTION

      The city council said it would cost too much. The business community said it was too far away from the city. The citizens did not want their tax dollars used to build it. The newspapers rejected it as the mayor’s folly. Pilots, including the great Charles Lindberg, opposed the location of it, and everyone complained that the site was selected through political favoritism. Ironically, the arguments used to oppose the original Denver Municipal Airport in 1929 were nearly the same as those used to oppose Denver International Airport 66 years later.

      This is the story of three airports and how they brought the city from cow town to boom town. During the early days of the western frontier, the original pioneers and the wagon trains had difficulty crossing the Continental Divide. When the transcontinental railroad went north through Cheyenne, the fledgling city of Denver and its surrounding towns and counties were left behind. The city responded by connecting a rail line from Cheyenne to Denver, but then saw a second chance to be the critical link in the coast-to-coast connection by capitalizing on the newest technology, the airplane. However, when the airmail routes also went north through Cheyenne, city visionaries realized that unless they did something bold, their cow town could soon become a ghost town.

      On the cusp of the Great Depression, Denver mayor Benjamin Stapleton pushed for the development of the first city-operated airport. Denver Municipal Airport opened in 1929 with three hub airlines: United, Continental, and Frontier. While Stapleton was honored to have the airport named after him, by the mid-1980s, the name had become synonymous with congestion, flight delays, and frequent closures when snow moved in. To solve the problem, Denver mayor Federico Peña envisioned a massive new airport, but when Denver International Airport (DIA) opened in 1995, its three hub airlines had whittled away to just one, and critics warned of dire consequences. Yet the airport persevered, and today, with its iconic tent roof, six runways, and 53 square miles of land, it stands as one of the most beautiful and busiest airports in the world.

      The development of Denver’s airport is as much representative of the change in how we look at the world and our development as citizens of the United States as how our airports have changed. Denver’s first airport was the vision of a man, Benjamin Stapleton, who was heavily associated with the Ku Klux Klan. A little over 50 years later, Denver’s first Hispanic mayor, Federico Peña, envisioned Denver’s newest airport and got the city started on a bold new path. What Peña started, Denver’s first African American mayor, Wellington Webb, finished when he officially opened DIA on February 28, 1995.

      The DIA of today is very different than it was nearly 30 years ago when it first opened. Through mergers and buyouts, a small handful of airlines now dominate the industry, but times will change again. The industry sits on the precipice of the evolution of unmanned aerial vehicles and, soon, spaceport development. However, DIA, now officially called DEN, is not only a beautiful creation but also has the ability and leadership to continue to benefit Denver, its surrounding cities and counties, and the state of Colorado for years to come.

      The authors wish to share that the focus of this book is not a list of simple facts about the airport, although those are noted where appropriate. We instead tried to discover the underlying stories behind what the public sees, and the connecting and recurrent themes in building both airports. We had far more research and found more stories than we had room for in this book. The history of the airlines in Denver is as rich and intriguing as the history of the airport, but there are only so many pages to fill. Also, there were many photographs, many of them iconic, that we were unable to secure the rights for.

      One

      AVIATION COMES TO COLORADO

      THE ORIGIN OF THE DENVER AIRPORT

      Benjamin Stapleton, mayor of Denver (1923–1931 and 1935–1947) and Charles Vail, a famous highway engineer, envisioned an airport that would establish Denver at the forefront of the fledgling aviation industry. Their vision established Denver Municipal Airport, which would later evolve into the fifth busiest airport in the United States and the 18th busiest in the world. Initial construction of Denver Municipal Airport was completed by the summer of 1929 and included just an administration building and a hangar with a lean-to maintenance shop. A smaller building housed the airport’s fire-fighting equipment, ambulance, and a central heating plant. The airport opened despite strong opposition from city councilmen who contended that its land was bought to pay back political favors. Citizen complaints about tax dollars being used for aviation and businessmen complaining that it was too far away from the city also caused problems for the airport. Despite these problems, Denver Municipal Airport was established initially with three airlines committed to starting air service. (Courtesy of DPL.)

      Located in east Denver, the original Denver Municipal Airport would undergo a name change to Stapleton Airport, then eventually a move 23 miles northeast of downtown Denver to become Denver International Airport. In an epic evening known as Push Night, airport operators closed one international airport and opened another within hours of each other. Today, Denver International Airport features six runways and over 100 airline gates, and occupies 53 square miles of land, making it larger than the island of Manhattan in New York City. (Courtesy of DPL.)

      The Rocky Mountains were an obstacle for travel to and from early Denver. This photograph taken between 1885 and 1890 shows that only the most stalwart pioneers, using mule teams and wagons, dared to travel through Ute Pass in El Paso County, Colorado. The Rockies proved too much of

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