Call Field

Frank Kell led the local effort to win the camp. By August 17, 1917, he and others had raised $35,000 and secured a promise from the Katy railroad to lay track to the site. Maj. J. B. Brooks came in November to inspect the nearly finished buildings, and the first six army pilots arrived on November 20; by late December there were 600. Besides its hangars the field had a hospital and six barracks for 175 men each, and it later added four hangars and lofts for carrier pigeons. Thirty-four men died in training, the fewest at any center.

What the plaque says

When the United States entered World War I, April 1917, the Aviation Section, Signal Corps, U.S. Army, had only 112 pilots. Yet the allies, relying heavily on the U.S., planned the greatest of all aerial fleets, and the U.S. moved at once to meet the expectations. In August, Wichita Falls was chosen, because of good winter weather, as location for a new aviation field for pilot training programs. Through efforts of local citizens, this 640-acre site was leased and named for Lt. Loren H. Call, a pilot killed on duty in Texas, 1913. Construction began September 4, 1917, on primary flight training school; 50 to 60 buildings went up north of this spot on Call Field Road; runways and 12 hangars were situated south of the road. Planes used included the standard JL and Curtis JN4. Major John Brooks (later Major Gen. Brooks) was the first commanding officer. (His horse stable, 360 feet north, is only surviving Call Field building) with him came 15 enlisted men from 6th Aero Sqn., Hawaiian Terr., and five flying cadets from San Diego, California. In time, over 3,000 officers, cadets and enlisted men were based here. Before Call Field closed in July 1919; the school gave commissions and wings to some 500 men and sent two aero squadrons overseas for combat duty. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kell House Museum — 4.0 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 4.6 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 12 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.
• Royal Theater — 20 mi
  Archer City's movie house, burned in 1965, given a false front for The Last Picture Show and brought back by the town in the 1990s as a working stage on Main Street.

More markers nearby

• Wichita Falls Traction Company — 3.0 mi
• Bowman Cemetery — 3.3 mi
• Kell, Frank — 3.7 mi
• Kemp, Joseph Alexander — 3.8 mi