Opa-Locka Airport

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{| class="infobox bordered" style="width: 220px; font-size: 95%;" |- ! colspan="4" style="text-align: center; background-color: #4682B4; color: white;" |Opa-Locka Airport

Opa-locka Airport is a general aviation airport located in Opa-locka, Florida and 12 miles northwest of Miami, Florida. It has a control tower which is manned from 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM. The airport has four fixed base operators. The airport is owned by Miami-Dade County and operated by the Miami-Dade Aviation Department.[Official Opa-locka Airport site] - URL retireved April 8 2006

History

Aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss retired from aircraft development and manufacturing in the 1920s and became a real estate developer in Florida. In 1927 he founded the city of [[Opa-locka], naming it Opa-tisha-woka-locka, a Native American name that translates into ``the high land north of the little river on which there is a camping place.'' Realizing neither the name nor its translation would easily roll off the tongue, Curtiss simply snipped the four middle syllables off and in 1926 he incorporated Opa-locka.

Adjacent to the city he created the Florida Aviation Camp on a large tract of land, and moved his Glenn Curtiss Aviation School there from its former location close to Biscayne Bay in Miami. He transferred part of the land to the City of Miami, and it became the Miami Municipal Airport. This airport was also known as Glenn Curtiss Field. In 1937 Amelia Earhart started her attempt to circumnavigate the world from this airport. The airport was later named Amelia Earhart Airport. It was closed in 1959 and is now Amelia Earhart Park.[History of Miami area airports] - URL retireved April 8 2006 The All-American Air Races were held at Miami Municipal/Amelia Earhart Airport from 1929 until 1935, and the All-American Air Maneuvers from 1935 until 1941 and from 1946 to 1950[air races of the world] - URL retireved April 8 2006.

Shortly before he died in 1930, Curtiss transferred the rest of his Florida Aviation Camp property to the United States Navy. This property became Naval Air Station Miami (NAS Miami). This station supported both heavier-than-air and lighter-than-air craft. The dirigible USS Akron stopped at NAS Miami on both legs of its 1933 trip to the Panama Canal Zone, and departed the station less than two weeks before its fatal crash in April, 1933. NAS Miami was one of the stops on the triangular Germany-Brazil-United States-Germany route of the Graf Zeppelin[Miller, Alicia Momsen. From Rio to Akron aboard the Graf Zeppelin, 1933: A flight aboard a dirigible, as seen through the eyes of an eight year old girl.] - URL retireved April 8 2006.

During World War II, NAS Miami was an important training center, with six training bases. Activity continued on a reduced basis after the war. Part of NAS Miami, known as Masters Field, became Marine Corps Air Station Miami (MCAS Miami). *[History of Marine fighter squadron stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Miami] - URL retireved April 8 2006. MCAS Miami was closed in 1959. The property was transferred to Dade County, and the Dade County Junior College opened there in 1961. In 1962 the remainder of the NAS property, except for a portion reserved for the U. S. Coast Guard, was transferred to Dade County, and became Opa-Locka Airport. In 1965 Coast Guard Air Station Miami transferred its operations from Dinner Key to the Opa-Locka airport.

References

External links

* Resources for this airport:
* AirNav [airport information for KOPF]
* FlightAware [airport information] and [live flight tracker]
* NOAA/NWS [current] and [historical] weather observations
* SkyVector [aeronautical chart for KOPF]
* FAA [current OPF delay information]

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