Ford Airport: “The Nation’s First Modern Airport”

Ford Airport operated in Dearborn from 1924 to 1947 and has been called “the first modern airport in the United States.” Indeed, the airport pioneered the use of paved runways, radio guidance, airmail, passenger airline schedules, and a hotel airport. Home to the factory that made the iconic Ford Tri-Motor airplanes, Ford Airport also had the world’s only privately owned mooring mast, built to dock the huge dirigibles of the early twentieth century.