Foster Army Air Field

Victoria paid to get this base and paid when it left. A fund drive led by E. J. Dysart in spring 1941 raised about $17,000 to locate it here, and government construction cost more than $4 million. That year the county courthouse recorded a 25 percent rise in marriage licenses. In August 1957 Washington announced Foster would close despite new construction money. A Save Foster campaign led by Lyndon Johnson, Ralph Yarborough and Clark Thompson failed, and the base closed in December 1958. By 1968 the Devereux Foundation and Gary Aircraft were among the field's largest tenants.

What the plaque says

Foster Army Air Field Prior to World War II, in an effort to match the powerful air armadas of the Axis nations, the U.S. Army Air Corps (later U.S. Army Air Forces) rapidly increased its number of training installations throughout the country. The city of Victoria secured an advanced single engine aerial gunnery training command here, with construction beginning on April 25, 1941. Initially named Victoria Field, the military renamed the site in honor of 1st Lt. Arthur L. Foster, an instructor at Brooks Field (San Antonio) killed when his plane crashed in 1925. The first class of cadets arrived in Sept. 1941 and subsequent classes arrived throughout the war. Cadets received both classroom flight instruction and gunnery training on site, with aerial gunnery practice at ranges on Matagorda Island and Matagorda Peninsula. In 1942, the military assigned a unit of the Women's Army Corps here. Cooperation between the U.S. and Allied nations brought foreign aviators here during the war for training, most notably the 201st Fighter Squadron, Mexican Expeditionary Air Force (The Aztec Eagles). The end of World War II brought the closure of military sites across the nation. Foster Army Air Field (AFF) closed on October 31, 1945; however, the airfield's inactivation was short lived. In 1951, the Korean War created a need for additional jet training facilities and once again the people of Victoria rallied behind efforts to secure a military installation. As a result of local solicitation, the military reactivated Foster AFF on April 1, 1952, with the first class of jet aviation cadets arriving in March 1953. On July 1, 1954, Foster Air Force Base (AFB) became a permanent military installation and later became the tactical air command control center for the western U.S. In Dec. 1958 the military closed Foster AFB. Two years later the federal government turned the airfield over to Victoria County in exchange for nearby Aloe Field, which the governemnt sold to private investors. In 1976, Foster Field became Victoria Regional Airport. (2008)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 4.2 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.
• De León Plaza — 5.9 mi
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Fannin Battleground State Historic Site — 22 mi
  The open prairie east of Goliad where Fannin's retreating column formed a square short of the Coleto Creek timber on March 19, 1836, and surrendered the next day.
• Half Moon Reef Lighthouse and Linnville — 24 mi
  The last screw-pile lighthouse of the Texas coast, brought ashore at Port Lavaca, a town founded by refugees from Linnville, the port Buffalo Hump's Comanches burned in August 1840.

More markers nearby

• 201st Fighter Squadron, Mexican Expeditionary Air Force (The Aztec Eagles) — 0.4 mi
• First Presbyterian Church of Victoria — 5.0 mi
• Camp Victoria — 5.3 mi
• William Robert Smith — 5.4 mi