Fort Nelson Airport

In March 1933, pilot Stan McMillan of MacKenzie Air Services landed his Fokker Super Universal about 50 km northwest of Fort Nelson, bringing in a group of prospectors and their equipment.  He needed more than 20 locals to tramp out a landing area in the snow in order to take off again.  With the growth of resource exploration in the 1930s, Fort Nelson hosted more visits by floatplanes and skiplanes.  The first scheduled service was introduced by Grant McConachie�s United Air Transport in 1937, using a Ford Tri-Motor CF-BEP on floats carrying mainly supplies and mail, along with the occasional passenger.

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McConachie�s airline, now renamed Yukon Southern Air Transport (YSAT), contracted the construction of a land-based airfield starting in the winter of 1938/1939.  The first aircraft to land there was a YSAT Barkley-Grow like the one shown, in April 1939.  The Department of Transport established a weather and communications office in 1940 but did not complete the facility until 1942.  Arrival of crews working on construction of the Alaska Highway put development of the airfield into high gear in the spring of 1941. The first official landing was by a DoT aircraft on an inspection tour. 

When the US became drawn into the war in the Pacific, the US Army Air Force assumed responsibility for completing construction of runways and buildings, although the field remained nominally an RCAF Station.  These photos show how the field appeared from the air in 1943, along with the principal hangar constructed by the USAAF.  The hangar also housed the field�s first terminal, utilized largely by Canadian Pacific Airlines who were serving the community largely on military contracts.

 

The remaining years of the war saw a steady stream of more than 8,000 transient USAAF military visitors.

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The high volume of traffic and the sometimes unpredictable weather inevitably led to some accidents.  This Lockheed C-60 Loadstar met its end near Fort Nelson in 1943.

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Responsibility for the airport in turn was given to Northern Rockies Regional Municipality at Fort Nelson in the late 1990�s.  The field serves the community today with scheduled services offered by Central Mountain Air (as of 2022) and is the home to several charter services, as well as federal and provincial government agencies.  (Bottom photo courtesy N727RH via Wikipedia.)

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