The sky’s the limit: Charleston’s Yeager Airport marks 70 years of service

CHARLESTON, W.Va.  — Like many young boys growing up in the Charleston area, Nick Keller was fascinated by airplanes. He loved to go to Yeager Airport to watch the planes take off and land.

“When I was 12 years old, I came up here and took pictures of the airplanes,” Keller said from an office overlooking the tarmac at the Kanawha County airport. “I love history, and I love aviation.”

Keller, 32, is now assistant director at Yeager, which celebrates its 70th year of operation this year.

Keller started collecting the old pictures, and a thought occurred to him.

“It’s cool that we saved all these pictures, but how cool is it if no one ever gets to see them?” Keller wondered. So he set about writing a book chronicling the history of Yeager Airport.

The book, “Images of Aviation: Yeager Airport and Charleston Aviation,” is available at local bookstores and through online retailers. Keller used airport photographs and research culled from local newspapers and the state archives in compiling the book.

Keller said the first airplanes in the Kanawha Valley came in the summer of 1912 at a special exhibition held in South Charleston. Adults paid 50 cents and children a quarter to watch airplanes take off and land. Float planes appeared on the Kanawha River at about the same time.

“I know in the 1920s there was an airfield in Kanawha City right where Watt Powell Park used to be,” Keller said. The U.S. Army flew Liberty bombers into the airfield that were intended to be used in the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain.

In 1930, local officials built Wertz Field in Institute near the site of West Virginia State University. Wertz Field served as the area’s primary airport for years, but bigger planes and changing technology soon showed the airfield would be too small.

Charleston city officials, set up a committee in the late 30s to study sites for a bigger airport, but by 1938 had figured out there weren’t any flat locations in the area suitable for a project the size of an airport. So they decided they’d have to chop off the top of several mountains and build the airport just outside Charleston.

Kanawha County officials got voter approval for several bond sales, and construction of Kanawha Airport began in 1944. The airport was completed in 1947 at a cost that equates to $97.5 million in today’s dollars. Kanawha Airport was renamed Yeager Airport in 1985 in honor of Hamlin native Gen. Chuck Yeager.

The newly formed West Virginia Air National Guard was the first to move onto the new airport, flying P-47 and P-51 fighter aircraft from the facility. The move began a partnership between the airport and National Guard that continues to this day.

“Over the past 70 years, these two entities have worked hand-in-hand to advance the cause of an airport presence in Charleston, a cause that is imperative to both the economic vitality and development of the region and nation,” said Maj. Gen. James A. Hoyer, adjutant general of the West Virginia National Guard. “Being co-located with Yeager allows the Guard to provide cost saving and essential protection to the airport and at the same time reduce the cost to our nation’s defense and homeland security. It’s truly a joint venture that is beneficial to all, and we couldn’t be more proud of the partnership that’s been forged over the years.”