The case of the missing Kerrville airport

Louis Schreiner Field, an early airport, January 1935.
Though it has the same name as our current municipal airport, it was
in a different location.  Click on any image to enlarge.

I’ve had an interest in local aviation since I was a student at Starkey Elementary, when my mother got her private pilot’s license, and we often flew together as a family. Her instructor was the late Les Cruthirds, and her pilot’s license was for VFR – visual flight rules. She flew small Cessnas – 152s, which was a two-seater, and 172s, which had four seats. 

We flew out of the Kerrville Municipal Airport which is between Kerrville and Center Point, beside Texas Highway 27. The entrance to the airport had a big wrought-iron entryway over the road, and it read “Louis Schreiner Field.”

I’ve known for some time that location was not the first location of “Louis Schreiner Field,” but I was never certain exactly where that first airport was. Though the current airport had its beginnings in the early 1940s, there was an earlier “Louis Schreiner Field” somewhere between Kerrville and Ingram.

In the summer of 2000, the late Bob Sieker, who for many years operated a flying service at the site of today’s airport, sat for an interview with the Kerr County Historical Commission as part of their oral history project.

Airport gas station, 1930s

“The [first] airport was established between Ingram and Kerrville,” Sieker remembered. "Mr. [Louis] Schreiner gave them that land and that was midway – you’re probably familiar with the country enough to know that between here and Ingram, that’s halfway.” That first airport was sold during the war, they “took the money and bought Goss’s farm east of Kerrville and renamed it Louis Schreiner Field. And they did away with the old Schreiner Field.”

Mr. Sieker learned to fly at the old airstrip.

Driving between Kerrville and Ingram, I’ve often wondered where that old airport was located. There are plenty of flat fields on either side of the road, even “midway” between the two communities. But none of them seemed large enough to contain an airfield.

Louis Schreiner field, 1935, another view.

I think my mistake was thinking a 1930s-era airport would be like our municipal airport today. I was imagining paved runways and taxiways, with perhaps a hangar or two, and a brightly colored windsock.

That first Louis Schreiner Field was well-named. It was basically a field. No runways. No hangars.

I learned this looking through “The Portal to Texas History,” a comprehensive website maintained by the University of North Texas. You can visit the site at https://texashistory.unt.edu/

While rummaging through other items, I ran across two photographs of the old Louis Schreiner Field, both taken by the U. S. Army Air Corps in January of 1935. Looking at the roadways shown in the photographs, I finally knew exactly where the old airport was once located.

Driving toward Ingram, and crossing Goat Creek, the highway makes a curve to the left. After the curve, and on the left, is the entrance to Arcadia Loop Road. Continuing on Junction Highway, and turning right on Mill Run, you enter an industrial park, which is built on relatively flat land.

Judging from the photographs, that area was the site of the old Louis Schreiner Field, where many local aviators took to the sky, and there they first “slipped the surly bonds of Earth.”

Until next week, all the best.

Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who fondly remembers flying with his mother, Pat Herring, the pilot. This column originally appeared in the Kerrville Daily Times June 4, 2022.

 

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