Regional Airport, Elko, Nevada

1919 - Present

The new Elko Regional Airport Terminal and Taxiway were completed and open for business in August, 2001. That is the focus of this page. To get there, though, I have included some wonderful links on the history of the airport. Howard Hickson's "Dirt Runways" is full of neat trivia and history. I didn't know that Captain Eddie Rickenbacker (World War I flying ace), Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, and Wiley Post have landed at our airport.

HOWARD HICKSON'S HISTORIES

This is an excellent article on the early history of the Elko airport:

Dirt Runways
Elko Airport - The Early Years (1919-1926)

AIRPORT (Terminus of the First Commercial Air Mail Route)

"On April 6, 1926, Varney Air Lines pilot Leon Cuddeback, carrying one bag of mail, landed his tiny Curtis Swallow bi-plane at Elko, Nevada, completing the first scheduled air mail run in the United States.

The single engine, 90-horsepower aircraft had taken off from Pasco, Washington, stopped at Boise, Idaho, for fuel and mail, then completed the 460-mile flight to Elko. The Varney contract was awarded October 27, 1925, at a rate of eights cents an ounce. Varney sold to Boeing, which merged with United Air Lines in 1931."

Altitude Record

"An airliner provided the highest altitude record for a North American bird. In 1963 a plane cruising 21,000 feet near Elko, Nevada, struck an object. When the plane landed, a feather was removed from the leading edge of one of the plane's horizontal stabilizers and was sent to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for identification. The bird was identified as a Mallard, an altitude record-breaking duck!"

USGS Topographic Map of Elko Airport (1975)

USGS Aerial Photograph of Elko Airport (1994)

Click on photos to see original high clarity digital photographs