Exhibit details Ephrata airport's history

Cameron Probert/ Columbia Basin Herald<br> Pat Dunston stands in front of part of the Ephrata airport history exhibit.

by Cameron Probert<br
| April 24, 2009 9:00 PM

EPHRATA — Playing cards with pictures of bombers sit next to black and white photographs of troops standing in the middle of the desert.

These are part of an exhibit tracing the history of the Ephrata airport from its time as a training base during World War II until the early 1990s.

The display is located in the Port of Ephrata administrative office, at 1990 E. Division Ave. Viewing hours are from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. The exhibit is free to the public.

Pat Dunston, who wrote a book about the airport’s history in 1992, collected the items for the display while interviewing people about the airport.

“In the process I was in contact with probably 250, 300 people, who had worked here or had been veterans here, and they sent me photographs and souvenirs. So, I collected all of this stuff and needed to do something with it.”

Dunston said before the government moved into the airport, the landing strips were made out of dirt.

“During the Depression, they got federal money to locate an emergency landing field here on the route from Saint Paul, (Minn.), to Seattle. It just kind of proceeded from there. The landing field was here and they could build an air base quicker than they could otherwise,” she said.

The Ephrata training base, which housed several thousand people during the early 1940s, drew people from around the country.

“We had bombers here from 1942 to 1943 and fighter training from 1944 to 1945,” she said.

Dunston pointed out an envelope from the air mail service, which stopped at the airport. It was one of the items she collected while putting together her book.

“We have lots of people, I had interviewed, that gave us comments and remembrances,” she said, showing a quote from one of the people stationed in Ephrata.

While the buildings for the base were being built, the troops lived in tents doing field training.

“They had very Spartan living situations at first. Then they began to build more and more. They had a church and a headquarters building and a theater, post exchange and a gymnasium.”

People stationed at the base trained in items such as maintenance, navigation, base operations and flying bombers and fighters.

In the center of the exhibit memorabilia is on display, such as salt shakers with the U.S. Army logo and copies of the policy for dealing with soldiers who were absent without leave (AWOL).

“Because it was such an arid, windblown, sandy, out of the way place, people did not like it here. There was a lot of AWOLs. This was a letter about how to deal with that,” she said. “I tried to cover as many aspects of it as I could.”

Some of the buildings from the original Army base are still standing at the airport, including the fire station, parachute packing building and what is now the Facilities building for the airport.

“When the military left, it took a number of years before the city acquired it. In the meantime, the War Department transferred a number of buildings to the Bureau of Reclamation because they were beginning to work again on the dam and the irrigation canals and so they had a hospital out here,” Dunston said.

Along with the Bureau of Reclamation, flight schools started using the airport for training.

“People came from as far away as California and Alaska because we had these huge hangars. There were a couple of schools and maintenance facilities and so they had their planes worked on here,” Dunston said.

Commercial air service started at the airport in 1946, lasting through the mid-1970s. West Coast Air, the first company to use the airport, merged to become Airwest, then it became Hughes Airlines before it closed.

Plans to create the exhibit started in 2003, when the Port of Ephrata commissioners allowed Dunston to set up the display. She formed a non-profit corporation to help with fund raising.

For more information, Dunston can be reached at 509-754-0570.