54th Street Municipal Airfield becomes Miami’s “go-to” flying field
Area’s first municipal airfield is established near Hialeah
For three years is area’s sole inland general aviation airfield
Hialeah’s 54th Street Airfield was one of the unsung heroes of Miami’s early aviation history. It was inaugurated with little to no fanfare on July 4, 1926 to serve as the Miami base for Florida Airways after the latter had begun to fly Florida’s first scheduled Air Mail service in April. The 54th Street Airfield was the third Miami airfield which Florida Airways had attempted to make its home. The Glenn Curtiss airfield originally offered had proved “too small.” A second field owned by W. R. Comfort at Red Road and 7th Avenue and used for the first few months of Florida Airways’ operations was also abandoned. In late June, the Miami chapter of the National Aeronautic Association flew civic leaders on a tour of the city in two Florida Airways planes, leaving from an airfield which had reportedly been “established temporarily on the Roney tract on 54th Street, near Hialeah” for the occasion. N.B. Roney, the original owner of the tract, was a New Jersey lawyer turned Miami Beach real estate magnate who built Miami Beach’s first grand beachfront resort, the Roney Plaza Hotel.
Site of much early aviation activity
Shortly thereafter, Florida Airways began regularly scheduled service from the 54th Street field. Though lacking improvements such as lighting for night landings or even basic facilities, the airfield nevertheless ended up serving as Miami’s only municipal airfield from July 1926 until January 1929. Anyone flying into or out of the city during that period — unless in a seaplane — would likely have had to use the 54th Street airfield.
Even after the city built a larger, better-equipped Municipal Airport in Opa Locka which became operational in late 1928, the 54th Street Airfield continued to be used as an auxiliary airfield for a number of years. At various times it was leased by different flying services, used for flying lessons, sightseeing tours and charter flights. It was the field used by the Miami Aero Club and for aerial exhibitions such as Mabel Cody’s Flying Circus as well as by private aircraft. Even Pan Am pilots used the field on various unscheduled occasions when needing a place to land in Miami prior to the opening of Pan Am’s own NW 36th Street Airport in January 1929.
The 54th Street Airfield was still listed as an auxiliary field in the Dept. of Commerce’s Airway Bulletin for 1934 and appears in the December 1935 Miami Sectional Chart. The last known photo of an aircraft at the field was reportedly taken in 1940. No trace of it remains in the area today.
- https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-miami-news-miami-news-27-june-1926/166762134/
- https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-miami-herald-herald-07-july-1926-5/166762755/