PORTLAND, Ore. — Portland International Airport has come a long way to get where it is today. Wednesday's debut of the new main terminal might be the single biggest upgrade in the airport's history — and likely the most visually impressive — but it's just the latest in a long line up PDX upgrades stretching back decades.
Portland's first airport was on Swan Island, operating from 1927 to 1940. But even though it only lasted for 13 years, it began with a big event: Charles Lindbergh, the American hero only recently back from his famous transatlantic flight, arrived in the Spirit of St. Louis to kick off Portland's airport history.
But as the city grew and aviation modernized, land for a new and bigger airport along the Columbia River was purchased in 1936. Proceeds from a $300,000 bond paid for the 700 acres. There was a lot of work to do to make the future PDX a reality, according to Kerry Tymchuk with the Oregon Historical Society.
"Massive ...
three or four hundred thousand cubic yards of stuff to fill in the river there, to make the airport there, to stabilize it," he said. About half of the $3 million cost to fill in the land and build the new airport came from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration, the big effort to lift America out of the Great Depression. By 1940, the new airport was ready.
The original airport bore little resemblance to the PDX of today, with a tiny main terminal and crisscrossing runways that formed an X shape, lat.