by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Attending an event today at the Flight Path Museum and Learning Center at Los Angeles International Airport was a great experience to learn some of the history of aerospace and aviation, while dropping off my son at LAX on Thursday was an opportunity to see the late stages of work on SkyLink, the 2.25 mile electric people mover that looks to open sometime in the last half of this year.
Some prior posts here have examined some of the early history of the airport, among the busiest in the nation and world, with not far under 74 million passengers in 2025, which was about 15 million less than 2019, that pre-pandemic year that seems like ages ago. These include ones on the instrumental national air races held in September 1928 at what was then called Mines Field, as well as blueprints in our collection regarding an early terminal there.
As aviation in greater Los Angeles in the Roaring Twenties grew by leaps and bounds, including air mail and commercial uses, as well as the onset of passenger service, a proliferation of air fields and airports developed. By 1927, however, a growing chorus called for an Angel City municipal airport and one prime identified location was near the coast southwest of downtown. The 27 February edition of the Los Angeles Times reported,
Among the municipal airport sites which are under consideration is a tract of 480 acres extending one mile on the northerly line of Belleview avenue, having a depth of three-quarters of a mile, and being bounded on the east and one the west by the Santa Fe Railroad right of way and Arizona avenue, respectively. The site has been offered to the city by W.W. Mines.
The price asked for the land is approximately $2,400,000, to be paid over a period of twenty-four years, with a parcel of twenty acres of land purchased outright by the city at a cash price of $5000 an acre, and the rest of the land to be leased to the city for the twenty-four-year term, until it is absorbed by the purchase plan. A special consideration is offered if the deal is consummated before December 1, 1927.
If you try finding Belleview or Arizona avenues on a map, that will be a fruitless search, but the former ended up become Imperial Highway and the latter Sepúlveda Boulevard, while the Santa Fé right-of-way was likely for a streetcar or narrow-gauge rail project. What the “special consideration” entailed was not mentioned.
The area ended up being called Mines Field, not the greatest name for an airport, but William Wales Mines (1876-1939) was a figure of note in greater Los Angeles real estate for much of the early 20th century. A native of Massawippi, Ontario, Canada, southeast of Montreal and not far from the U.S. border at Vermont, Mines, the son of a doctor of Irish extraction and a French Canadian mother, came to Los Angeles, as so many did for health reasons, in the late 1890s (the 1900 census states it was 1899 and other sources remark it was 1896) where he was employed as a bookkeeper for the Southern California Edison Company and Los Angeles Gas and Electric Company.
In 1902, he partnered with Oscar E. Farish in a real estate firm, the enterprise lasting for about a decade, after which Mines was part of the Union Realty Company before launching his own company. He also, as was typical for realtors, worked in insurance. Among early endeavors were projects near Westlake (MacArthur) Park and the Wilshire Boulevard district. He moved to Altadena, where his grand house was lost in the January 2025 Eaton fire, and was involved in the development of the Annandale tract at the west end of Pasadena. Mines was an official in local, state and national realty associations, was president of the powerful Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association, headed the Los Angeles National Horse Show and was a police commissioner.
The push for a municipal airport plan gained steam by spring 1928, with the Professional Pilots’ Association preferring what was called the Inglewood site, but its members also suggested “that a small, centrally located site be secured close to the heart of the city. The City Council had nearly 30 sites offered to it, with the number narrowed to five by that point, including Inglewood or Mines, Vail in what is now the City of Commerce/Montebello area, the nearby Bandini, the Hellman estate in what Monterey Park, and at Dominguez where the 1910 air meet was held.
The 10 March edition of the Times reported from Inglewood that the new Centinela Valley Development Association, with members from El Segundo, Hawthorne, Hermosa Beach, Inglewood, Lennox, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach and Wiseburn (an unincorporated area near El Segundo and Hawthorne), was also pushing for the site to be the home of the upcoming air races, as well as the city air field.
Meanwhile, another site outside Angel City limits, was brought up, with the Pasadena Star-News of the 14th, this being near El Monte in the San Gabriel Valley (perhaps at or near the current airport in that city), while contenders emerged in the San Fernando Valley at Van Nuys, where an airport opened in late 1928 and at Sesnon, named for William T. Sesnon, the husband of Mary Porter, whose father and his cousin, along with San Fernando founder Charles Maclay, owned a huge area. The Sesnon property was west of today’s Cal State Northridge near the Northridge Fashion Center area.
By mid-March, it was reported that, after eight months of investigation, City Council majority and minority reports were expected about desired airport sites. The former, provided by two members, identified the 400-acre Hellman (at $4,750 an acre), the 1100-acre Sesnon ( at $1,000 an acre) and 1000 acres, including the Mines property, at no more than $3,000 an acre—a total consideration of $6 million. The duo also recommended that Terminal Island be converted into a field, while the county supervisors were advised to develop the El Monte area site. The minority, a sole member of the council, agreed with his colleagues about Mines, but advocated for 666 acres at Van Nuys at $2,300 an acre, involving some $4.5 million, and recommended not choosing a third site unless the others lacked the ability to provide airmail service.
After further visits by Council members, a decision was made on the 23rd, with the Los Angeles Express of the following day reporting,
The citizens of Los Angeles stand pledged—by their legislators in the City Council—to spend $6,000,000 for municipal airports. The much-discussed airport proposition came to a head and a conclusion in the City Council . . . when that body voted to buy the Mines, Vail and Sesnon fields, a total acreage of 2213, and at a total cost of $6,000,000. The money will probably be raised by bond issue, it was declared. Negotiations for purchase will be started at once.
Vail, considered the “close-in” airport off Telegraph Road, which extends southeast toward Anaheim, was to involve 413 acres and south of $2.4 million, while Sesnon, at 1,000 acres, was to be purchased for an even million, and Mines, comprising 800 acres, was to involve $2.4 million. Terminal Island was to be accepted by the city and was earmarked for a naval base field, while the majority report recommendation to acquire the Hellman site was voted down.
In its number of the 26th, the paper added that there many details to be worked out, pending a successful bond issue vote, including federal Commerce Department classifying, how to provide security, construction requirements, adequate lighting and rental prices to companies. Notably, the Express remarked that it was nearly three years since the Council began looking into the matter, while two companies, the builder of Bach airplanes seeking to move from Clover Field in Santa Monica to Mines, and Firestone Tire and Rubber were pleased at the news.
The Times of the 26th remarked that the Council’s Finance Committee was at work with owners of the three sites “so that the contracts for procuring the 2213 acres of land embraced . . . can be prepared and presented to the Council within the next two weeks.” It was added that Vail, already in use by Western Air Express, was a priority in terms of getting possession of the land and doing so “on a lease basis, the rental payments to apply to the ultimate purchase price after the bonds have been authorized by a popular vote,” these terms looking like what Mines offered the city the prior year.
The paper also noted that Major Clarence M. Young, who headed the air regulations division of the federal Department of Commerce, was said to have declared that the acquisition of Mines, Sesnon and Vail would constitute the “ideal municipal airport arrangement for Los Angeles,” though he demurred from offering his opinion when nearly 30 locales were under consideration by the City Council to keep the feds out of a purely local decision. A report from Detroit indicated that auto manufacturing titan Henry Ford was considering acquiring 160 acres near mines for his aircraft building enterprise.
The following day’s edition of the paper, as well as the Los Angeles Record, observed that another major tire and rubber company, Goodyear, was looking at a dirigible manufacturing plant, costing some $3 million and employing 2,000 workers, having wired its congratulations from Akron, Ohio, to Los Angeles on the selection of Mines because, the firm’s president, Paul W. Litchfield, remarked “I consider this the ideal lighter-than-air site on the Pacific Coast.” When the famous Graf Zeppelin landed at Mines in August 1929, a Goodyear blimp, a common site over the decades in our country, was present, as a photo in our collection shows.
Under the heading of “Progress in the Air,” the Times issued a lengthy editorial hailed the news of the likely lease-purchase arrangements as leading to “a boom in the aircraft business in Los Angeles, from all indications.” The Council’s decision was proof “that the city really means business” while the body had “risen above politics and logrolling” and deserved kudos for an act that “will place the city in the forefront of air progress.” As an existing field, Vail received general approbation and “Mines Field, while not demonstrated, appears to have good possibilities, and both it and Sesnon Field are recommended by experts.”
The piece went on to note that having multiple sites was a wise move because of the need to accommodate commercial as well as passenger needs and, while four airports (including the naval one at Terminal Island) was more than currently required, “they are no more than will be required for the future, unless all signs fail.” The paper then told readers, that, as a region will large-scale aviation-related manufacturing and more pilots and private planes than any other area in the nation of a similar size,
Southern California seems destined to a tremendous aircraft expansion. Nature made certain of this by providing ideal flying conditions, but man has lagged behind in arranging the surface facilities. The long step which Los Angeles now takes will put the artificial conditions almost abreast of the natural, and provide an impetus that will make aviation hard to stop.
It was added that “transportation is civilization” and public funding, as with for highways, was considered as important. The piece concluded with the observation that “the provision of airports is thus seen to be a public duty,” but also asserted that “it will also be a paying investment” in terms of the economic benefit accruing to the city.
The Van Nuys News, also of the 27th, however, reported that it was Sesnon, considered “nearest the most rapidly growing section of the city,” that would get developed first. Council member Charles H. Randall, of the majority committee and whose first district encompassed all of the eastern San Fernando Valley within the city, was determined “to speed the building of hangars and the installation of necessary equipment to put [it] into condition for immediate use.”
Randall’s plan was to secure $100,000 in funding from the “Sesnon interests” to begin work ahead of the bond issue vote—he obviously believed the election was a foregone conclusion—with the funds to be later reimbursed by the city. Moreover, the Sesnon family appeared to have offered a small down payment and just 4.5 % interest with no time frame for repaying any advanced funds. Randall also understood that it will take months before any efforts could be undertaken at Mines or Vail, while Sesnon was to move quickly, if his concept was workable.
A Sesnon representative told the paper that the airport would become “the main aviation field in Los Angeles for private planes, schools of instruction, and for many divisions of the aeronautical manufacturing business which will follow the airports.” The reason for the first portion was the site’s proximity to the Hollywood film industry and the tony tracts and cities on the south flank of the Santa Monica Mountains, such as Beverly Hills, Bel-Air, Holmby Hills and the like. It was also asserted that flying conditions were better, with less fog and avoidance of crossing hills or mountains.
In its edition of the 28th, the Express informed its readers that,
[The] City Council today voted to place the question of a bond issue for the purchase of [sites for] the three Los Angeles municipal airports before the people at the May 1 primary election and it instructed the city attorney to take steps to place the proposition on the ballot.
It was anticipated that the amount would be $7 million to include acquisition, as well as equipment, costs, while a resolution was approved “urging the United States department of commerce to lend the services of an aviation expert to Los Angeles to supervise the conditioning of the field[s],” while also requesting ratings for each. Vail was expected to receive the highest, a triple A, once required lighting was installed.
The next day, though, the paper reported that there were two new proposals submitted to the Council, with one, from Edrie Reavis, concerning a San Fernando Valley site “at a junction of the main coast line of the Southern Pacific railroad and the branch line of the Southern Pacific from Burbank,” this appearing to be near today’s Hollywood/Burbank Airport.
The other was from an agent of the Dominguez Land Company “calling attention to the advantageous method by which the Dominguez field,” used in the seminal January 1910 air meet, “can be purchased, as well as other features of this proposed site. The company also proposed “a deferred payment plan with installments running over a number of years.” Reavis, a realtor, and the Dominguez firm obviously could see the manifold benefits in terms of land values for their holdings if they could sway the council.
The three selected sites—Mines, Sesnon and Vail—were, however, the ones at play for the 1 May primary, which was to include the presidential primary for the coming fall election, so we’ll halt here and return next with part two as the campaign for the bond issue intensified in the next month or so. Be sure to check back with us then!