Stapleton International Airport

Stapleton highlighted on a map of Denver neighborhoods

Stapleton International Airport was Denver, Colorado's primary airport from 1929 to 1995. At different times it served as a hub for TWA, People Express, Frontier Airlines and Western Airlines as well as a hub for Continental Airlines and United Airlines at the time of its closure.

In 1995 Stapleton was replaced by Denver International Airport. It has now been decommissioned and the airport property is being redeveloped as a retail and residential neighborhood.

History

Stapleton East to West view, January 1966. Only concourses A, B, and C existed at that time. A United Airlines Pilot Training Center was constructed on the vacant land between the airport's west boundary and the housing tracts, in subsequent years.

Stapleton South to North view, January 1966. Runway 35 was later designated 35L, after 35R was constructed. The old United Airlines pilot training center buildings, on the airport proper, were still in operation. A UAL DC-8 pilot training flight is making a missed approach, complete with its shadow.

USGS aerial photo of Stapleton International Airport looking to the north, June 1993, shortly before its closure. Note that runway 17R/35L crosses Interstate 70 at its midpoint.

Former Stapleton International Airport from the air (6 February 2006)

Two Convair 580s of the based Aspen Airways at Stapleton in 1986

Stapleton was opened on October 17, 1929 as Denver Municipal Airport. Its name was changed to Stapleton Airfield after a 1944 expansion, in honor of Benjamin F. Stapleton, the city's mayor most of the time from 1923 to 1947, and the major force behind the project when it began in 1928. Concourse A, the original building from 1929, was still in operation when the airport closed. The airport was originally created by Ira Boyd Humphreys in 1919.

1938 airport diagram

The April 1957 Official Airline Guide shows 38 weekday departures on United, 12 Continental, seven on Braniff, seven on Frontier, seven on Western, five on TWA and one on Central.^{[citation needed]}

The facility received a new jet runway and terminal building in 1964. After deregulation, three airlines operated large hubs out of Stapleton (Frontier Airlines, Continental Airlines, and United Airlines), leading to significant traffic congestion. In order to combat the congestion, runway (18/36) was added in the 1980s and the terminal was again expanded. Concourse D was built in 1972, and Concourse E was built in 1988. At the time of its closure in 1995, Stapleton sported six runways (2 sets of 3 parallel runways) and five terminal concourses.

In 1982 the inaugural revenue flight of the Boeing 767 landed at Stapleton, after a flight from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago.

During the energy boom of the early 1980s, several new skyscrapers were built in downtown Denver including Republic Plaza (Denver's tallest at 714'). Due to Stapleton's location being 3 miles (4.8 km) due east of downtown Denver, the Federal Aviation Administration imposed a building height restriction of 700'-715' (depending on where the building was). This allowed an unimpeded glide slope for runways (8L/26R) and (8R/26L). The height restriction was lifted in 1995, well after the city's commercial skyscrapers had been erected.

Stapleton Airport was the site for Ted Fujita's studies of microbursts.

On February 25, 1995, George Hosford, Air Traffic Controller, cleared the last plane (Continental Flight 34, to London Gatwick) to depart from Stapleton International Airport. This would also mark the end of Continental Airlines' use of Denver as its hub.

Decommissioning

By the 1980s, plans were under way to replace Stapleton with a new airport. Stapleton was plagued with a number of problems, including:

• inadequate separation between runways, leading to extremely long waits in bad weather
• little or no room for other airlines that proposed/wanted to use Stapleton for new destinations (an example of this was Southwest Airlines)
• a lawsuit over aircraft noise, brought by residents of the nearby Park Hill community
• legal threats by Adams County, Colorado to block a runway extension into Rocky Mountain Arsenal lands

The Colorado General Assembly brokered a deal in 1985 to annex a plot of land in Adams County into the city of Denver, and use that land to build a new airport. Adams County voters approved the plan in 1988, and Denver voters approved the plan in a 1989 referendum.

After weeks of delays, a Continental Airlines flight, with a destination of London Gatwick, was the last flight to depart Stapleton. The airport was then shut down. A convoy of vehicles of many kinds (rental cars, baggage carts, fuel trucks, etc.) traveled to the new Denver International Airport (DIA), which officially opened for all operations the following morning.

The runways at Stapleton were then marked with large yellow "Xs," which indicated it was no longer legal or safe for any aircraft to land there. The IATA and ICAO airport codes of DEN and KDEN were then transferred to the new DIA, to coincide with the same changes in airline and ATC computers, to ensure that flights to Denver would land at the new DIA.^[1]

All of Stapleton's airport infrastructure has been removed, except for the former control tower. The final parking structure was torn down to make room for the "Central Park West" section of the housing development in May of 2011.

Facilities

UAL Douglas DC-6, N37514, code 5414, parked on the northwest maintenance ramp of Stapleton Airport, in September 1966.

At the time of its decommissioning, the airport had the following runways:^[2]

• 17R/35L (11,500 ft)
• 17L/35R (12,000 ft)
• 8L/26R (8,599 ft)
• 8R/26L (10,004 ft)
• 7/25 (4,871 ft)
• 18/36 (7,750 ft)

The terminal had five concourses:^[3]

• Concourse A – Commuter flights, Mesa Air Group, United Airlines
• Concourse B – United Airlines
• Concourse C – Continental Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Mexicana Airlines
• Concourse D – Continental Express, Delta Air Lines, MarkAir, Pan American World Airways, Trans World Airlines
• Concourse E – America West Airlines, American Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Sun Country, USAir

Continental Airlines was once headquartered in Stapleton, moving there in October 1937.^[4] Airline president Robert F. Six arranged to have the headquarters moved to Denver from El Paso, Texas because he believed that the airline should have its headquarters in a large city with a potential base of customers.^[5] At a 1962 press conference in the office of Mayor of Los Angeles Sam Yorty, Continental Airlines announced that it planned to move its headquarters to Los Angeles in July 1963.^[6]

Redevelopment

While Denver International was being constructed, planners began to consider how the Stapleton site would be redeveloped. A private group of Denver civic leaders, the Stapleton Development Foundation, convened in 1990 and produced a master plan for the site in 1995, emphasizing a pedestrian-oriented design rather than the automobile-oriented designs found in many other planned developments. Nearly a third of the airport site was slated for redevelopment as public park space.

The former airport 4,700 acres (19 km²) site 10 minutes from Downtown Denver is now being redeveloped by Forest City Enterprises new urbanist project. Construction began in 2001, and as of 2008^[update], 3,200 single-family houses, row houses, condominiums and other for-sale housing as well as 400 apartments had been built.^[7] The new community is zoned for residential and commercial development, including office parks and "big box" shopping centers. Stapleton is by far the largest neighborhood in the city of Denver and an eastern portion of the redevelopment site lies in the neighboring city of Aurora, Colorado.

Stapleton is expected to be home to some 30,000 residents in 12,000 homes, with six schools, an 80 acres (320,000 m²) central park, a light-rail station, 10,000,000 sq ft (930,000 m²). of planned office space, 1,500,000 sq ft (140,000 m²). of retail space, and 1,100 acres (4.5 km²) for parks and open space.^[8] Stapleton's 1,100 acres (4.5 km²) of open space includes the restored Sand Creek Regional Greenway and Bluff Lake Nature Center, one of the nation's largest urban wildlife refuges. Northfield Stapleton, one of the development's major retail centers, recently opened.

Accidents

Several major air crashes involved Stapleton as the origin or destination airport, with four actually occurring at Stapleton.

• On October 6, 1955, United Airlines Flight 409, a Douglas DC-4 propliner, was a scheduled flight departing from Denver, Colorado to Salt Lake City, Utah. The aircraft crashed into Medicine Bow Peak, near Centennial, Wyoming, killing all 66 people on board (63 passengers, 3 crew members.) The victims included five female members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and military personnel. At the time, this was the deadliest airline crash in U.S. commercial aviation history.

• On November 1, 1955, United Airlines Flight 629, a Douglas DC-6B airliner, exploded over nearby Longmont while en route to Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington from Stapleton, killing all 44 persons aboard. John "Jack" Gilbert Graham was found to have planted a dynamite bomb in a suitcase that was loaded onto the plane, to murder his mother in revenge for the way she treated him as a child. He was executed two years after Flight 629 exploded.
• On July 11, 1961, United Airlines DC-8-12 N8040U was destroyed after landing. Asymmetric thrust on engines 1 & 2 (left wing) forced a loss of control on the runway. The aircraft struck a maintenance vehicle, killing the driver. In the ensuing disaster, 17 of the DC-8's 122 occupants died.
• On August 7, 1975, Continental Airlines Flight 426 crashed due to windshear after taking off and climbing to 100 feet (30 m) on runway 35L. Nobody was killed in the accident.
• On November 16, 1976, a Texas International DC-9-10 aircraft stalled after takeoff at Stapleton and crashed. The 81 passengers and 5 crewmembers suffered a total of 14 injured, but there were no deaths.
• On December 28, 1978, United Airlines Flight 173, which departed from Stapleton, ran out of fuel while circling near Portland, Oregon, as the crew investigated landing gear problems. The DC-8-61 jetliner's fuel supply was exhausted after the crew decided to "go-around" one more time prior to landing. The plane subsequently crashed in a wooded residential neighborhood southeast of the Portland airport. Ten of the plane's 189 occupants were killed.
• On November 15, 1987, Continental Airlines Flight 1713, a DC-9-14 jetliner bound for Boise, Idaho, crashed on takeoff at Stapleton during a snowstorm. The probable cause of the crash was the failure of the flight crew to have the aircraft de-iced prior to take-off and the over-rotation of the aircraft on take-off. Twenty-eight of the plane's 82 occupants were killed.
• On July 19, 1989, United Airlines Flight 232, a DC-10-10, crash-landed at the Sioux City, Iowa, airport on a flight which originated at Stapleton. Flight 232 experienced a catastrophic engine failure over Alta, Iowa, on a flight to Chicago, Illinois. One hundred and twelve of the plane's 296 occupants died.
• On March 3, 1991, United Airlines Flight 585 was on final approach to Colorado Springs Municipal Airport from Stapleton when the 737-200 spun out of control. All 20 passengers and 5 crew were killed.

References

1. ^ Freeman, Stapleton International Airport
2. ^ http://milehifield.topcities.com
3. ^ http://oldterminals.topcities.com
4. ^ Kasel, Carol. "CONTINENTAL AIRLINES: THE DENVER YEARS." Rocky Mountain News. October 30, 1994. Retrieved January 24, 2010.
5. ^ "The Company." Continental Airlines Magazine. July 2009. Retrieved February 8, 2010.
6. ^ "Continental Airlines to Move Its Main Offices Here From Denver." Los Angeles Times. August 16, 1962. B11. Retrieved January 24, 2010.
7. ^ denver.bizjournals.com
8. ^ USA Today

External links

	Colorado portal
	Aviation portal
	World War II portal

 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Air Force Historical Research Agency.

• Stapleton redevelopment project
• Bluff Lake Nature Center is an urban wildlife refuge, outdoor classroom and urban natural area located on the former Stapleton Airport property.
• Airport history
• Stapleton retail center
• Example of Stapleton Builder
• Example of Stapleton Colorado New Home Builder
• Stapleton Airport Photographs

Coordinates: 39°46′45″N 104°52′55″W / 39.779255°N 104.88184°W / 39.779255; -104.88184