McCook Airfield

Reverse reads: "Miami River Parkway --Filling and grading Old Mc.Cook Field,Dayton.Ohio." McCook Field was an airfield and aviation experimentation station operated by the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps and its successor, the United States Army Air Service from 1917-1927. The field was located approximately one mile (1.6 km) north from downtown Dayton, Ohio. Constructed during World War I, it became the location of the Aviation Service's Engineering Division in 1919. Urban growth encroached on the space and larger aircraft being developed overtaxed the field's surface. Ultimately, the field became too small for its purpose. The Army intended to relocate McCook's operations to Langley Field, Virginia, but Dayton's civic leaders did not want to lose this center of innovation and industry. John H. Patterson, President of the National Cash Register Corporation (NCR), began a local campaign to raise money to purchase a tract of land large enough for a new airfield. The land would then be donated to the U.S. Army with the understanding that it would become the permanent home of the Engineering Division. Patterson died in 1922 but his son, Frederick B. Patterson, organized the Dayton Air Service Committee, a coalition of prominent Daytonians and businessmen dedicated to raising the money necessary to purchase land for the Air Service. Their intensive campaign netted $425,000. The Dayton Air Service Committee's offer far exceeded all others, and in August 1924 President Calvin Coolidge accepted Dayton's gift. This facility would later become Wright-Patterson Air Force Base