photo sharing and upload picture albums photo forums search pictures popular photos photography help login
Type your message and click Add Comment
It is best to login or register first but you may post as a guest.
Enter an optional name and contact email address. Name
Name Email
help private comment
Don Boyd | all galleries >> Memories of Old Hialeah, Old Miami and Old South Florida Photo Galleries - largest non-Facebook collection on the internet >> Miami and Florida AVIATION Historical Photos Gallery - Airports, Airlines, Aircraft - All Years - click on image to view >> Pan American Field - 36th Street Airport - MIAMI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT (MIA) - Historical Photos Gallery > 1947 - aerial view of what became Miami International Airport looking north-north east
previous | next
17-JAN-1947 Florida State Archives

1947 - aerial view of what became Miami International Airport looking north-north east

Miami, Florida


I love this image because virtually all other aerials concentrated on the north side of the field and not the south and middle. I never realized that the Blue Lagoon on the south side had been dug so early in the history of the airport. Runway 9R-27L is at the bottom, 12/30 is in the middle, along with 17/35. It's amazing to see that the airport on the north side did not extend west of 17/35 at the time. 17/35 was closed in the late 60's as I recall and the present day E-Satellite, sits just to the east of where it was.

From the archives description: "Personal Author: Fairchild, Sherman M., 1896-1971. Sherman M. Fairchild collection.) General Note: The photographer Sherman Fairchild was born in 1896 in Oneonta, New York. He was contracted by the government to develop a camera for aerial photography; such cameras already existed but produced highly distorted photographs due to slow shutter speeds which could not keep up with the movement of the flying plane. Fairchild developed a camera where the shutter was placed inside the lens which allowed the camera to be fast enough to produce photographs with minimal distortion. After World War I the Army made his cameras their standard aerial cameras."


other sizes: small medium original auto
comment | share
Guest 10-Dec-2011 08:16
Notice that the so called "military ramp" along runway 12/30 northwest of Red Road is not there yet; in Jan. 1947. The ATC and ATSC had been established already for a few years. Does anyone know when the "military ramp" was constructed and why it was called that after so many intervening years?