Ephrata Municipal Airport is a public use

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial Aviation, air transport. They usually consist of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surf ...

located southeast of the

central business district A central business district (CBD) is the Commerce, commercial and business center of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides wit ...

of Ephrata, a city in

Grant County, Washington Grant County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 99,123. The county seat is Ephrata, and the largest city is Moses Lake. The county was formed out of Douglas County in February 19 ...

, United States. It is included in the

National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems The National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS) is an inventory of U.S. aviation infrastructure assets. With the Airport and Airway Improvement Act of September 3, 1982, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was required to develop a ...

for 2011–2015, which categorized it as a ''

general aviation General aviation (GA) is defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as all civil aviation aircraft operations except for commercial air transport or aerial work, which is defined as specialized aviation services for other ...

'' airport.

History

The airfield was established in 1939 as Ephrata Army Air Base. It was used initially as a support airfield for bombing and gunnery ranges in the area (Seven Mile Gunnery School). Transferred to

Fourth Air Force The Fourth Air Force (4 AF) is a numbered air force of the Air Force Reserve Command (AFRC). It is headquartered at March Air Reserve Base, California. 4 AF directs the activities and supervises the training of more than 30,000 Air Force Reserv ...

in 1940 as a group training airfield for

B-17 Flying Fortress The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is an American four-engined heavy bomber aircraft developed in the 1930s for the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). A fast and high-flying bomber, the B-17 dropped more bombs than any other aircraft during ...

heavy bombardment units (including the 401st Bombardment Group), with new aircraft being obtained from Boeing near Seattle. Later it was reassigned to

Second Air Force The Second Air Force (2 AF; ''2d Air Force'' in 1942) is a USAF numbered air force responsible for conducting basic military and technical training for Air Force enlisted members and non-flying officers. In World War II the CONUS unit defended ...

when heavy bombardment group training was reassigned to that command. It was also used by

Air Technical Service Command An atmosphere () is a layer of gases that envelop an astronomical object, held in place by the gravity of the object. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A stellar atmosphere ...

as an aircraft maintenance and supply depot. On 25 September 1945, Major General Willis H. Hale,

, notified Ephrata Army Air Base that it was temporarily deactivated,Associated Press, "Two Airfields In Desert Area Are Inactivated - Victorville, Daggett Bases Temporarily Suspend Operations", ''The San Bernardino Daily Sun'', San Bernardino, California, Thursday 27 September 1945, Volume 52, page 6. and it was turned over to War Assets Administration (WAA) for disposal. It was transferred to Grant County and developed into a commercial airport in the late 1940s. Empire Air Lines then began commercial service to Spokane and Yakima, Washington. Empire was merged into

West Coast Airlines West Coast Airlines was a United States local service carrier, a scheduled airline certificated by the federal Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), linking small cities in the Pacific Northwest with larger cities in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, ...

in 1952. West Coast continued serving the airport and was merged into Air West in 1968 which was renamed to

Hughes Airwest Hughes Air Corporation, doing business as Hughes Airwest, was a local service carrier from 1970 to 1980 in the Western United States. It was backed by Howard Hughes' Summa Corporation. Its original name in 1968 was Air West and the air carr ...

in 1970. All service ended in 1974 and was briefly replaced by Cascade Airways before all commercial service was moved to the Grant County International Airport in Moses Lake, Washington in 1975. Parts of the 1989 Steven Spielberg film ''

Always Always may refer to: Film and television * ''Always'', a 1985 film directed by Henry Jaglom * ''Always'' (1989 film), a 1989 romantic comedy-drama directed by Steven Spielberg * ''Always'' (2011 film), a 2011 South Korean film, also known as ''O ...

'' were filmed on the airport.

Facilities and aircraft

Ephrata Municipal Airport covers an area of 2,300

acre The acre ( ) is a Unit of measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area, United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one Chain (unit), ch ...

s (931 ha) at an

elevation The elevation of a geographic location (geography), ''location'' is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational equipotenti ...

of 1,276 feet (389 m) above

mean sea level A mean is a quantity representing the "center" of a collection of numbers and is intermediate to the extreme values of the set of numbers. There are several kinds of means (or "measures of central tendency") in mathematics, especially in statist ...

. It has three

asphalt Asphalt most often refers to: * Bitumen, also known as "liquid asphalt cement" or simply "asphalt", a viscous form of petroleum mainly used as a binder in asphalt concrete * Asphalt concrete, a mixture of bitumen with coarse and fine aggregates, u ...

paved

runway In aviation, a runway is an elongated, rectangular surface designed for the landing and takeoff of an aircraft. Runways may be a human-made surface (often asphalt concrete, asphalt, concrete, or a mixture of both) or a natural surface (sod, ...

s: 3/21 is 5,500 by 75 feet (1,676 x 23 m); 4/22 is 3,467 by 150 feet (1,057 x 46 m); 11/29 is 3,843 by 60 feet (1,171 x 18 m). For the 12-month period ending June 28, 2010, the airport had 135,140

aircraft operations, an average of 370 per day. At that time there were 72 aircraft based at this airport: 24% single-

engine An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ge ...

, 7% multi-engine, and 69% glider.

Cargo Carriers

References

External links

Port of Ephrata: Port District #9 of Grant County, Washington
*

WSDOT The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT or WashDOT, both ) is a governmental agency that constructs, maintains, and regulates the use of transportation infrastructure in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington. Establi ...

Pilot's Guide: *

Economic Impacts:
Aerial image as of July 1996
from

USGS The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an government agency, agency of the United States Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geograp ...

The National Map ''The National Map'' is a Collaboration, collaborative effort of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and other federal, state, and local agencies to improve and deliver topographic information for the United States. The purpose of the eff ...

'' * {{USAAF 2d Air Force World War II Airports in Washington (state) Transportation buildings and structures in Grant County, Washington Airfields of the United States Army Air Forces in Washington (state) Airports established in 1943 1943 establishments in Washington (state)

History

Facilities and aircraft

Cargo Carriers

See also

References

External links