New Aviation Exhibition
Public Information & Communications
For Release: Dec. 13, 2010
Contact: Kevin Christopher
Public Information & Communications Specialist
480-644-4699 Tel
kevin.christopher@mesaaz.gov
Contact: Lisa Anderson
Mesa Historical Museum
480-835-7358
lisa@mesahistoricalmuseum.org
The City of Mesa and Boeing are sponsoring a new exhibit “Best Place in the Country” opening Friday, Dec. 17 at the Mesa Historical Museum, 2345 N. Horne. This exhibit, the first of its kind, focuses on the role that Arizona played in training pilots, gunners and bombardiers during World War Two. With good, year-round flying weather and miles of flat, unpopulated land, Arizona was an ideal location for some of the largest training facilities in the country and the world.
Through maps, photographs, artifacts and first-person accounts, the exhibit tells the story of the 59 airfields that were built for training fighter and bomber pilots from three nations. Arizona also had some of the largest bombing and gunnery training ranges in the United States. Much of the spent rounds and bomb fragments still lie scattered across the deserts of Arizona. The exhibit will also show how many of these former military airfields are being used today.
The second phase of the exhibit, opening in mid January, celebrates the 70th anniversary of Mesa entering the age of aviation. Within a span of two hours on July 16, 1941, Mesa Mayor George Goodman hosted groundbreaking ceremonies for two air training facilities—one to train pilots primarily from the United Kingdom and one to train American military pilots. In 1941, a town of 7,224 people had the foresight to buy land for the military fields we now know as Falcon Field Airport and Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, formerly Williams Air Force Base. The two airports and surrounding aviation enterprises form a backbone of Mesa’s economy now and into the future. The exhibit celebrates and tells the story of the beginnings of these two great aviation enterprises.
Phase three of the exhibit, with a starting date to be determined, will tell the story of Mesa’s biggest and most influential aviation enterprise, Boeing, which produces the U.S. Army’s premier attack helicopter, the Apache Longbow.
For more information, visit www.mesahistoricalmuseum.org for updates on these exhibits and the exciting new programs the museum will host throughout 2011 to celebrate Mesa’s and Arizona’s past and future.