(1946)
Provincetown Landing Field.
Conventional airport histories begin in the 1940s. But there was a rudimentary landing field at least a decade before that. And in 1936, Provincetown actually enjoyed regularly scheduled passenger service to Boston on the short-lived Mayflower Airlines. The company was headed by Lieut. Parker W. Gray, who also happened to be its chief pilot. This photograph, taken by Althea Boxell in 1946, shows just how scrappy the landing field was before Van Arsdale took over and may help explain why Mayflower service ended so quickly after it began.
¶ Last updated on 11 March 2017. ¶ Image courtesy of the Provincetown History Preservation Project, Dowd Collection, Page 4539. (Scrapbooks of Althea Boxell, Book 10, Page 167.)