Spokane played a unique part in the history of aerial warfare in the World War II days and afterwards. Called Sunset Airport, the facility was taken over in 1939 by the Army Air Corps for a training base. Eleven of the twenty groups of B-17 bombers stationed in England during World War II were trained in part at Geiger Field.
The history of aviation in Spokane began in 1911when a daredevil pilot flew across the country from Ohio to win a bet. In 1912, aviators were flying in and out of Glover Field (below Monroe Street bridge). After World War I, a Flying Circus staged stunts and took customers up for $5 ($81 today). Another new landing strip was created in the near valley and dubbed Parkwater Field (now Felts Field since 1927).
Geiger Field was named in honor of Maj. Harold Geiger, an aviation pioneer and war veteran who, incidentally, never was in Spokane.
After the war, personal air travel burst upon Spokane. Commercial airlines used Felts Field but soon found that was an inadequate location. In 1938 the city purchased 1280 acres of land west of town for a new airport to be named Sunset Airport (soon Spokane International Airport). Sunset Airport was renamed Geiger Field in 1939.
So why is the Spokane airport designated GEG? Easy answer. There are dozens of airport designations beginning with “S” and very darn few beginning with “G.” So Spokane became GEG.
(If you’d enjoy reading more on this history topic, read “From Geiger To Glory,” by Marshall B. Shore, in the 1996 Vol. 40, No. 4, The Pacific Northwesterner….. can be accessed at the Eastern Washington Historical Society archives at the MAC.)
