Model town is built

Just as World War I prompted the establishment of a naval air station at Miami’s Dinner Key, so, too, did the war result in the building of an Army aero-gunnery training camp in South Dade County. The Army’s base, on which construction was begun in April of 1918, was originally called the Cutler Aerial Gunnery Field. It consisted of approximately 1500 acres of scrub, pineland and marsh located 14 miles south of Miami on the bay. Upon its completion in September 1918, the camp was a model town with electricity, water and sewage and a well-equipped hospital. Officers’ barracks and other buildings were situated on a rock ledge among the pines with a view of the bay, while a row of hangars and maintenance shops were located on the west side of the camp next to a filled landing field. The camp enjoyed only two months of active wartime operation, however, before the war ended on November 11, 1918. On November 15, it was formally renamed the Victor Chapman Military Reservation, in honor of the first American pilot killed in the war and from that time onward it was called Chapman Field.

Field repurposed

In the years that followed the war, Chapman Field was used for a variety of purposes, including the development of horticultural research by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In World War II, both Embry Riddle and the University of Miami established pilot training schools there, and still later, portions of the old Army camp were developed into the residential community today known as Deering Bay. Miami-Dade County’s 483-acre Chapman Field Park is also located on land formerly included in the historic campgrounds. Additional details can be found in the attached articles.