Reno Air Mail Field
In the far corner of the Tennis Center parking lot sits a small historic marker dedicated to the Blanchfield that once served as The Reno Air Mail Field for many years, as well as being the site of some of Nevada’s rich aviation history.
Starting around 1918 the need for a local airfield was realized when one was constructed just outside the city limits (the current site of the Washoe County Golf Course and the Reno Tennis Center). When it first opened, the field was pretty barebone with the facility being improved in 1919, gravel runways and an aircraft hangar was built which would serve the fledgling Air Mail Service. The first scheduled mail-plane landed in Reno in early September of 1920. At about this same time the U.S. government first introduced cross-country air mail service.
Over the airfield’s 20 years history various events, such as the field's name change to Blanchfield in honor of a local air mail pilot, have occurred. However one of the biggest events in its history occurred in September of 1927. It was a big year for Blanchfield when the recently famed pilot Charles Lindbergh landed at the airfield in his Spirit of St Louis (a monoplane) as part of a national promotional tour. Some on-lookers of the landing said that the plane came to a stop within feet from parked cars and a stone fence.
Charles Lindbergh was a little-known pilot for the U.S. Air Mail in May of 1927, when he took off on what would become the first nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. His record-setting trip from New York to Paris in The Spirit of St. Louis not only made Lindbergh an instant celebrity, but it generated enormous excitement about what the future holds when it comes to aviation. A few months after the flight, Lindbergh kicked off a three-month tour of all 48 states (at this time Alaska and Hawaii were still territories) in his plane. At this point Blanchfield was still a small airfield that had changed little since its creation. The field and its hangar were leased by the Boeing company, one of the private contractors hired to carry the mail.
When Lindbergh flew into Reno from Sacramento on the afternoon of September 19th, one of the thousands of onlookers there to watch him land was eleven-year-old Agnes Heidtman, whose family lived near the field and knew its manager. Interviewed by Stephen Davis in 1990, she remembered getting special access to the famous pilot.
“The airport manager liked us kids, and he said, ‘Come on over and you’ll get to meet him.’ And when he got off the plane, the manager introduced us to Lindbergh, and [we] shook hands with him. And then he showed us the Spirit of St. Louis and let us take pictures. That was a thrill, because you know, an airplane at that time, it was a thrill to even see it come in, for the kids. That was a real special day for all of us.”
It was a big moment for the Truckee Meadows that would radically change the course of not only Renos history but the fate of Blanchfield. Lindbergh while on his tour through Reno, he gave a rousing speech promoting aviation and encouraging the development of better and larger airports. His words rang clear when it came to the Boeing company. By the following year the company bought some land three miles east of the Blanch airfield and opened a new, larger airfield, one big enough to land the newer commercial planes being used at the time. It initially opened as Hubbard Field, named after Eddie Hubbard, the company's vice president of operations. Once operations began at Hubbard Field, Blanchfield quietly began to fade. In 1933, Washoe County Commissioners decided to deed their half-ownership of the field to the City of Reno at no charge and by 1935, the entire area had become the Washoe County Golf Course.
Image Credit: Curtis Carroll
