PIA – A History: Peoria Airport Inc.

(In the previous installment, we covered Big Hollow Airport, which operated from 1926 to 1931.)

Big Hollow Airport was inadequate from the start. Excessive rainfall in May 1927 created bumps, making landing and takeoffs precarious. That summer, Caterpillar tractors spent a few days leveling out the airfield. By early 1929, local aviator E. B. Cole Inc. intended to build a new airfield. Initially, Cole favored the Bontjes farm just north of Bradley Park. 

Legislation allowing creation of airport authorities still lie in the future, so efforts to establish a larger Peoria airfield eventually involved the Pleasure Driveway & Park District of Peoria, founded in 1894. On July 15, 1930, the Park District sponsored an election so the public could vote on a plan for a new airfield, but it failed.

Meanwhile, the Big Hollow site lost commercial airmail and passenger airline service in 1931. Local business interests understood the economic value of restoring this service, so the Peoria Association of Commerce requested help from the City of Peoria. Another vote took place in May 1931, but it also failed. Then in March 1932, the A of C formed an airport committee which created a plan for fundraising through stock sales to acquire land and purchase materials to build a new airport. The goal was to raise $75,000. By May 14, a total of 261 Peoria businessmen helped reached its goal, actually exceeding it with $76,100 in funds.

On May 19, 1932, voters approved development of the new airfield, and the newly-formed “Peoria Airport Inc” purchased the 200-acre Van Buening Farm, located six miles southwest of the city, for $25,000. The rest of the money went toward construction of a passenger terminal, four shale-surfaced runways and other facilities.

American Airways inaugurated air mail and passenger flights to the new airfield on December 10, 1932 when a single-engine Fairchild 100A touched down at 9:00 o’clock that morning. The plane, which originated at Chicago Municipal Airport (present-day Midway Airport), departed 45 minutes later for Springfield, St. Louis, Memphis, Jackson and New Orleans with about a thousand peices of mail in nine sacks weighing forty pounds. The northbound evening flight arrived at 6:40 and was scheduled to depart ten minutes later. The plane’s pilot, Eyer L. Sloniger, had worked with Charles Lindbergh on Robertson Aircraft Corporation’s early air mail runs.

Congratulations for Peoria’s achievement came from outgoing President Herbert Hoover:

WHITE HOUSE

Washington, D. C. Dec. 10.

Carl P. Slane, president Peoria Airport Inc.: I congratulate the people of Peoria most heartily upon the enterprise and public spirit evidenced by the community development of their new airport to handle the air mail and similar business. This is a splendid example of the aggressive confidence of the nation in the face of all difficulties.

It should be noted that then-American Airways vice president Cyrus Rowlett “C. R.” Smith offered congratulations as well, though he could not attend the inaugural. Smith would become American Airlines’ president in 1934 and except for a period during the Second World War, served in this position until 1968 when President Lyndon Johnson named him U. S. Secretary of Commerce.

So scheduled air mail and passenger flights had returned to Peoria in the depths of the Great Depression. In the next installment, we’ll cover how the so-called “air mail scandal” and disastrous air mail flying by the Army Air Corps affected local commercial aviation.

– David P. Jordan