With glittering associations, which include names such as Charles Lindbergh, President Theodore Roosevelt and Orville Wright, St Louis can justifiably claim a leading role in American aviation history.
The airfield was the scene of the world's first experimental parachute jump, the first flight by a US president and in 1928 became America's first municipally owned airport. Here, too, the McDonnell Aircraft Company, forerunner of McDonnell Douglas (now taken over by Boeing), was established. The area started life as Kinloch Field a 550-acre site for launching balloons.
During that early phase President Roosevelt took his first airplane ride but a less famous man was to influence the future. Major Charles Lambert bought the airfield in 1920 and re-named it Lambert Field. The major had made his first flight with aviation pioneer Orville Wright and was the first person in St Louis to gain a private pilot's licence.
Lambert was a man with an aviation vision. When he acquired the land it was a rural backwater. In eight years Lambert, at his own expense, developed the site into a fully operational airfield with passenger and freight services.
In 1927 Colonel Charles Lindbergh flew from Lambert Field to New York at the start of his historic solo flight across the Atlantic. That year, too, Lambert offered to sell the airfield to the city. Despite all the improvements he had made the asking price was $68,000, the amount he paid for it seven years earlier. The city accepted, issued a bond to finance the purchase of extra land and in February 1928 St Louis became the first municipally-owned airport in the US.
A passenger terminal was built and early services to New Orleans and Detroit were established by Robertson Airlines and Marquette Airlines. In ten years traffic almost doubled but the advent of the Second World War held back passenger growth. For the military, however, St Louis became a key production area and over 3,000 war planes were built by the Curtiss-Wright, Robertson and McDonnell aircraft companies.
The post-war years were a dynamic chapter in aviation and, again, St Louis made significant contributions. The design of the main terminal became a template for similar buildings at New York's John F. Kennedy and Paris Charles de Gaulle airports. The arrival of the jet aircraft era, which saw TWA introduce Boeing 707 service at St Louis, coincided with the assembly of Mercury Spacecraft at Lambert by McDonnell Douglas.
As passenger traffic soared in the '70s the airport kept pace by increasing its operational capacity by 50 percent and expanding its terminal facilities. Through the 80s and 90s the boom went on. The airport now has its own light rail link with the city and has spent a further $97 million to cope with future growth. It is now the eleventh busiest airport in the US handling over 25 million passengers in 2002.
What would Major Lambert, the man who gave the airport its start and its name, have made of it all? We guess it might be just as he envisaged it back in those heady pioneering days.
