Payne Field Site

Mississippi's first airport was built here in World War I as an Army pilot training field. Cadets arrived from Texas in April 1918 for eight weeks of training; about 1,500 pilots passed through, and four died in crashes in the first four months. The Public Health Service called the site one of the worst malaria belts in the country. After the Armistice no new cadets came. In 1919 Major Theodore Macauley, flying the first transcontinental round trip, landed for repairs and waited out more than a week of rain. The field closed in March 1920 and became farmland.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Howlin' Wolf Memorial and Blues Trail Marker — 3.2 mi
  A Mississippi Blues Trail marker and granite memorial on East Broad Street honoring Chester Burnett, who was born nearby in 1910 and became the Chicago blues giant Howlin' Wolf.
• Waverley Mansion — 9.8 mi
  A National Historic Landmark mansion above the Tombigbee River, home of a plantation family that enslaved more than a hundred people, left empty for half a century before a family restored it.
• Tennessee Williams Welcome Center — 16 mi
  The 1875 Episcopal rectory where Tennessee Williams was born in 1911, moved to Main Street in the 1990s and now Columbus's welcome center and a National Literary Landmark.

More markers nearby

• Mary Holmes College — 3.4 mi
• Sandy Clay Rosenwald School — 6.6 mi
• The Lenoir Plantation — 7.5 mi
• Palo Alto — 9.2 mi