Hourglass Field

Hourglass Field was the popular name for an auxiliary landing field operated by the United States Navy before and during World War II north of San Diego, California. It is remembered as a racetrack in the regional road racing circuit and because a crackdown on unauthorized drag racing there triggered a riot in San Diego.

Hourglass field was located just west of U.S. Route 395 (now Interstate 15), about three miles north of what is now MCAS Miramar. It was formally known as Linda Vista Mesa Field and, later, Navy Outlaying Field (NOLF) Miramar or Miramar Field / #01715 (OLF). The popular name comes from the layout of the airport's runway system, which was a single piece of asphalt mostly in the shape of an hourglass.

Around the time of World War II the surrounding area was used by the Navy as a bombing range. The Army also used the area as a test area. In 1956 the Navy made the airfield available to the San Diego Junior Chamber of Commerce and the San Diego Region Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) for automobile racing. In 1957 a 1.8 mile track was laid out and the California Sport Car Club and San Diego Region SCCA staged races there for three years as part of the regional road racing circuit. The field was also used for motorcycle racing and unauthorized drag racing. In early August of 1960, after three bystanders were injured during a drag race, the Navy shut down the airfield to racing. This led to an organized mass protest and a riot the night of August 20 and 21 in San Diego that the San Diego Union dubbed the drag strip riot and socialists call one of the first major youth riots of the 1960s.

Some time after the riot the Navy cut trenches across the Runways at Hourglass Field. The field was no longer useful for any kind of racing but became a popular spot for radio-controlled model aircraft, especially thermal soaring gliders flown by members of the Torrey Pines Gulls R/C Soaring Society, through the 1980s. In 1969 Miramar College opened on the site of Hourglass Field as a training facility for San Diego law enforcement and firefighting personnel. The site is now a small part of the large San Diego community of Mira Mesa. Most of Hourglass Field is now gone but as of 2006 the northern edge of the hourglass still exists adjacent to the north side of the police/firefighter driving course. The southern edge of the baseball/softball fields parallels the edge of runway 3/21, east of the indent of the "hourglass", separated by approximately 40 feet. The remaining surface of this part of runway 3/21 is used as a parking lot for the baseball/softball fields. The alignment of Black Mountain Road is adjacent to the former eastern edge of runway 18/36, the north/south runway (that was not part of the hourglass shape). Hourglass Field Community Park is near the former eastern edge of the southern one-third or so of the runway 18/36.

External links

* [http://members.tripod.com/airfields_freeman/CA/Airfields_CA_SanDiego_N.htm Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields: California: Northern San Diego Area]
* [http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj91/davis.htm "Wild streets: American Graffiti versus the Cold War", International Socialism Journal, Summer 2001]