Abandoned Airfields - Western Express/West Mesa Mystery Cache
wer2ys4u: Call it gone....
Abandoned Airfields - Western Express/West Mesa
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THE CACHE IS NOT AT THE POSTED COORDINATES!
This is part of our Abandoned Airport Series.
This is a very simple mystery that can be solved with just the information on the cache page! We made this a puzzle so hopefully, you would take time to learn a bit of history about the old Airfields of the area.
This early commercial airline airport was located on the west side of Albuquerque. The date of construction of the field has not been determined. The earliest reference to the field was in 1929, in “Standard Oil of CA Airplane Landing Fields of the Pacific West". It listed the name of the field as “Western Air Express” Airport.
It consisted of four rolled sand runways in the shape of an eight point star. Depending on the source, the runways were anywhere from 5280’ to over 6600’ in length. The air field laid on between 715 and 1000 acres. During its peak, there were two hangers on the grounds. Some foundation can still be seen near the corner of Meridian Rd and Airport Rd
The airport was renamed “West Mesa” Airport sometime between 1938 and 1941. West Mesa closed sometime between August 1967 and February 1968.
As of 1996 the area had been built up with buildings and roads, but you could still see the outlines of several of the runways.
This 2007 image shows the only runway that is visible today. That is runway #11.
When you find this cache, you will be standing at the NW end of runway #11. When you look SE you can see the imprint the runway has made.
THE CACHE LOCATION IS:
N 35° 05.AB1
W 106° 43.595
A = Number of runways
B = Number of points on the star
If you have any personal stories about this place, we would love to here them in you logs!
Check out the others in the series:
Alameda - GC3PD8D
Coronado - GC2VE99
El Rancho - GC3PD97
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)
Treasures
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