How Did Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix Get its Name?

If you call the Phoenix Arizona area home, then you have probably been to Sky Harbor Airport. Sky Harbor is a rather interesting name for an airport. How did Sky Harbor Airport get it?s name?

According to Arizona Oddities, the name Sky Harbor goes back to 1929, a fact they ascribe to Desert Wings, which is a history of the airport written by Michael Jones, a City of Phoenix Aviation Department employee. Arizona Oddities reports that, according to Jones, Sky Harbor was named by J. Parker Van Zant, the owner of Scenic Airlines, who came here in 1928 looking for a Phoenix base for his company, ?The Rainbow Route Across the Grand Canyon.?

At the time, there already were three airports in Phoenix, but Van Zant wanted his own place, so he bought 278 acres of cotton fields east of 24th Street and south of the Southern Pacific railroad tracks and turned it into a landing field.

It?s kind of a let-down as to how the name came about, but apparently Jones says that by February of 1929, the airport was officially titled Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. He further states that whether the name came from a desire by Scenic to name all its airports Sky Harbor or by the idea of a ?harbor? for aircraft, no one knows for sure.

Scenic went belly-up later that year and sold the airport to a group of local investors, the Acme Investment Company. In 1934, Acme leased the airport to Maricopa County, but the county backed out of the deal a year later. Acme pushed the city to buy the airport, and the city resisted until American Airlines, which had been using Sky Harbor since 1930, threatened to cut off passenger and airmail service. The city relented and bought the airport for $100,000 in July 1936.

Little known factoid: Local legend has it that former Senator Barry Goldwater helped plow the former farm land to create the first runway. Fast forward to the present and the airport has grown to its current size of 3,000 acres and three massive terminals, named Terminals 2, 3 and 4. Terminal 1 was demolished in 1990, but the other terminals were never renumbered - resulting in the curious case of the missing Terminal 1.

Source for some information is www.ArizonaOddities.com. Used with permission.