Chiriaco Summit Airport is a county-owned 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 one nautical mile (1.85 km) northeast 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 Chiriaco Summit, in

Riverside County Riverside County is a county located in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, its population was 2,418,185, making it the fourth-most populous county in California and the 10th-most populous in the Unit ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. The airport is maintained as a functioning airport for emergency purposes and recreational VFR use by the Riverside County government. Some west coast aero clubs use the airport (and nearby restaurant) as a "destination" site for annual weekend competitions.

History

The airport was opened in April 1943 as Shavers Summit Army Airfield and was used by the

United States Army Air Forces The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

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 ...

as a training base during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. At the end of the war the airfield was determined to be no longer needed by the military and turned over to the local government for civil use.Thole, Lou (1999). ''Forgotten Fields of America : World War II Bases and Training, Then and Now''. Vol. 2. Publisher: Pictorial Histories Pub.

Facilities and aircraft

Chiriaco Summit Airport covers an area of 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 1,713 feet (522 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 one

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, ...

designated 6/24 with an

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 ...

surface measuring 4,600 by 50 feet (1,402 x 15 m). For the 12-month period ending November 30, 2006, the airport had 6,000

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 ...

aircraft operations, an average of 16 per day.

References

External links

George S. Patton Memorial Museum and Chiriaco Summit, CA Airport
{{authority control Airfields of the United States Army Air Forces in California Military facilities in the Mojave Desert Airports in Riverside County, California

History

Facilities and aircraft

See also

References

External links