Checkboard Field - Chicago’s First Airport Mystery Cache

To calculate the north coordinate take the last two digits of the smaller date, subtract 4 and add to the decimal portion of the posted coordinate.

To calculate the west coordinate take the last two digits of the larger date, add 13 and subtract from the decimal portion of the posted coordinate.

Not bad. :) Subtract and add. Add and subtract.

Now for the history...

At the corner of Roosevelt and 1st Avenue in Maywood was Chicago’s first and most likely the Nation’s busiest airport. It is the site of Checkerboard Field and across the street there were longer runways built and called, simply, U.S. Mail Airport. Checkerboard became the national maintenance center for all airmail aircraft and it was integral part of a network of routes for transcontinental airmail.

In 1919 the Post office extended airmail service from Cleveland to Chicago and initially used a north/south strip of land in Chicago’s Grant Park as their first choice of airfield. This proved to be too dangerous because of winds, shortness of the field and constant muddy conditions, so by 1920 a replacement was found with a field being used by a company called Decker and Cohen. They had used the field to deliver clothing to rural customers. The Post Office chose the site because it was close to rail lines allowing quick delivery downtown, the field had cinder runways and they were positioned to favor the prevailing winds. By 1923, the U.S. Government had started development of land west of 1st Avenue with a Veteran’s Hospital and ceded the Post Office the eastern portion to build a 5500ft runway. Airmail operations would eventually move across the street and stay there until Chicago’s Municipal Airport opened in 1926. Today it’s known as Midway International.

Checkerboard’s fame includes being part of the first transcontinental airmail flight on February 22, 1921. Four flights departed, two from New York and two from San Francisco, with Checkerboard Field serving as one of the Midwest stops. Snowstorms and crashes couldn’t stop this feat when an Omaha pilot named Jack Knight arrived at Checkerboard after being denied fuel at Des Moines because of a snowstorm, running out of fuel while landing in the same snowstorm at Iowa City, and then continuing on to Checkerboard because his relief pilot was snowed in at Checkerboard. Checkerboard was also one of the sites in which Queen Bess performed her barnstorming show. Bess Coleman was the first African American woman pilot to be licensed to fly. Her desire to fly was so great that she went to France to learn and be licensed when no one would allow her to do that in the United States.

Checkerboard remained a functional airport until the 1940’s. Today, a decaying stone marker in Miller’s Meadow of the Cook County Forest Preserve is all that remains of Checkerboard. Loyola Medical Center stands where the 5500ft runway existed.