Traffic issues abounded even at the airport’s beginnings in the 1930s — a sprawling, sodden mess, a swampy airfield bisected by busy Military Road, where traffic lights had to be erected and controllers stationed to manage frequent collisions between cars and planes.
Burning trash at a nearby landfill hindered visibility. Lively Arlington Beach, an amusement park and horse track, butted up against the field, so children were constantly crossing the runway, according to news stories at the time. Planes skidded, crashed and bent their landing gear. The world’s aviators dreaded coming in.
There was no better praise for an American pilot’s skill, the president of the National Aeronautical Association said in a June 15, 1941, Times Herald article, than saying “they fly in and out of Washington airport.”
It had a more optimistic beginning the day it was christened Hoover Airfield 99 years ago.
There was brassy fanfare and snappy hope in 1926, when two Fokker trimotor planes buzzed over the Potomac River and landed on the field, carrying 17 passengers from Philadelphia. They were greeted by more than 500 Washingtonians who came to marvel at the light speed of their changing world, according to stories in The Washington Post that day. Imagine that — commuter trolleys flying through the sky just 23 years after those cheeky Wright Brothers had their first flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
The space was introduced as part of a thrill ride for the nation’s 150th birthday, an airfield to shuttle celebrating Americans between the nation’s capital and Philadelphia, where the sesquicentennial fair was raging all year long.
The nine-seater planes were run by the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Co., which had its own 64-piece band — from piccolos to French horns, tubas and a xylophone — that heralded all transportation milestones. It was the apex of the gilded age, when titans of industry did such things.
Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover was there on July 16, 1926, sweating in a double-breasted suit, his white shoes and starched collar impossibly crisp in the wilting heat. It was named after him in the ceremony — Hoover Airfield.
The airfield, plagued by traffic, swampy grounds and inefficiency from the start, closely mirrored Hoover’s presidency, declining over the years because of congressional disinterest and discord until it was universally loathed and ridiculed — an arc that reflects D.C.’s ongoing struggle for its place in civic America.