Ranger Municipal Airport

Fowler's landing at Ranger was one stop on a transcontinental attempt that went wrong from the start. He left San Francisco on September 11, 1911, in a Wright biplane with an engine from the Cole Motor Car Company, and wrecked it near Alta, California, on the first day. He reached Jacksonville, Florida, on February 8, 1912, after the deadline for William Randolph Hearst's $50,000 prize, which expired unclaimed. Ranger came in the middle of that five-month journey.

What the plaque says

Ranger Municipal Airport The Texas Department of Transportation's Aviation Division lists this field as the third oldest operating in the state. The earlies documentation for an airplane landing in Ranger was on November 24, 1911, when Robert G. Fowler landed his Wright biplane on the V.V. Cooper, Sr. field just west of the present airport building, on the eastern edge of Ranger College. Fowler, an early aviator, landed in Ranger during his transcontinental attempt to win publisher William Randolph Hearst's $50,000 prize for the first person to fly across the United States in 30 days. In the spring of 1928, C.J. Moore and various aviation boosters determined to build an airport for Eastland County began searching for a suitable site. They purchased the 135-acre V.V. Cooper, Sr. tract, and officially dedicated the airport on Armistice Day, November 11, 1928. Called Haugland Airport in the 1930s, the airport was renamed Ranger Municipal Airport in September 1939 when the Ranger Flying Service, owned by Russell B. Miller, Hall Walker and O.G. Lanier opened a civilian pilot training program at the airport. Several noteworthy aviation events have occurred at Ranger Field. On June 16, 1931, aviatrix Amelia Earhart landed her Pitcairn Autogiro here. In the 1930s, Ranger Airport served as a midway point for glider races from Grand Prairie to Sweetwater and back. During World War II, Army Air Forces Piper L4 Cub pilots flew into Ranger Municipal Airport on multiple occasions for two to three days of practice in the clear skies around Ranger. Since World War II area citizens have worked continuously to make Ranger Municipal Airport an asset to the city, county and state. (2006)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Rip at the Eastland County Courthouse — 8.9 mi
  A horned lizard in a glass-topped casket in the 1928 Eastland courthouse, the creature said to have come out alive from the old building's cornerstone after thirty-one years.
• Conrad Hilton Center and Mobley Hotel — 18 mi
  The 40-room oil-boom hotel in Cisco that Conrad Hilton bought in 1919 when a bank deal fell through, now a museum of the Hilton start and of Cisco's 1927 Santa Claus bank robbery.

More markers nearby

• Site of J.H. McCleskey No. 1, Discovery Well of the Ranger Oil Boom — 0.8 mi
• First Oil Well Drilled in Eastland County — 1.0 mi
• Roaring Ranger — 1.0 mi
• Merriman Cemetery — 2.4 mi