HISTORY OF THE BYRON AIRPORT Conestoga Wagon to Corporate Jet

by Kathy Armstrong Leighton

The history of planes landing in Byron dates back to 1917. On that day the first plane landed in an open field next to the city dump, near the site of the present day Byron sanitary ponds.

I had the opportunity of actually interviewing people who remembered the 1917 Byron landing. The entire town turned out to witness the spectacle in response to advertising flyers that had earlier been spread around the area. The pilot was one of the old barnstormers who would give you a flight over Byron for $5.

Byron's first plane, 1917

I learned from those interviews that everyone was impressed with the fact that Toby LeGrand, the colorful constable who served for decades as Byron's chief law officer, took one of those around-the-town flights. By doing so Toby demonstrated to everyone's satisfaction that they indeed were being served by a sheriff who had true grit.

I was invited to address the visitors, guests, and delegates who gathered for the ceremony marking the official opening of the airport on October 8, 1994. I was invited to speak to those people in part because of the fact that my family had owned some of the land the airport was built on.

First Settlers
In the 1860s my great great grandfather, Joseph Conner, settled on property where the Byron Airport now stands. His son-in-law, John Samuel Armstrong, came in the 1870s. That explains why the current route to the airport is named Armstrong Road — my maiden name.

John Samuel & Mary Ann Armstrong, came rolling into the area riding in the back of a Conestoga wagon, to became some of the first settlers in the area. John turned over his first furrow in 1874. John Armstrong had six sons, each of them eventually owning a section of land along that road. So the whole area became Armstrong country.

I always believed that those first people must have stopped here in Byron because a wheel fell off their wagon. They had begun their journey in Ireland a decade earlier and journeyed to this neck of the woods by way of Massachusetts and Iowa. I don't know how far the entire trip was — perhaps 10,000 miles. If they had just kept going for another 20 miles they could have found a place that was more fertile, with better water, and less wind.

The pioneers bought land for less than two bucks an acre and began to scratch a living for themselves out of Byron's clay-burdened alkali soil. Those old dry land farmers depended completely upon the whims of nature for whether or not they would ever get any crops. And as we all know, the weather really can be rather whimsical in this part of the world.

During those early years I imagine that the Armstrongs usually lacked two nickels to rub together. John & Mary Ann ultimately gave birth to 12 children, which might account for some of the poverty.

Our part of the county eventually became a major grain-growing area. East County, in fact, for a while developed into the largest wheat-producing region between New Orleans and San Francisco.

I remember that when I was a child the site of the current airport contained fields of wildflowers and mushrooms. Every spring I would pick mushrooms right where the main runway is situated today. I fried them in butter and, with a little salt and pepper, those things were so good that I can still shut my eyes and remember that wonderful eating experience today.

My dad would bring in two or three five-gallon buckets running over with mushrooms every year. My Mom made the most wonderful soup from those things! If all you know about mushroom soup is the stuff that comes from a Campbell's can, you don't know anything about mushroom soup,

The fields were remote and free of trees so we had a lot of different kinds of fun in that area when I was young. It was the place where all us kids first learned how to drive. It was a windy spot then as it is today, and was the place where we flew kites.

Risky Business
In 1959 a man named John Maggi purchased 124 acres of the property from my great uncle, Wesley Armstrong, paying him $161,000. We were really impressed! Uncle Wesley became wealthy according to our standards in those days, simply by signing his name on a line of a contract.

The new landowner, John Maggi, had the unlikely job of testing parachutes. I still remember how amazed my dad was when he learned that anybody could make money in such a thing. I'm still amazed myself. How could a person earn a living testing parachutes? Wouldn't you die the first time a parachute didn't pass the test?

Maggi held the land for 14 years, selling it in 1973 to the county, which bought the property with the idea of perhaps building a real airport on the site. The process of reaching the point of actual construction, however, proceeded at a glacial pace. Between 1975 and 1981 the county conducted no fewer than four feasibility studies to finalize the decision. Serious negotiations were finally undertaken, beginning in the mid-80s but airport construction didn't actually begin until 1993.

Rome wasn't built in a day, as we all know, but I'll bet it didn't take the brothers Remus and Romulus two decades to get that project started.

The Wrong Place
One problem was that East County really didn't need an airport. We still don't need one. I believe the final decision was made for purely political reasons. Byron Airport actually lies closer to cities in Alameda and San Joaquin than to any East County population centers. It is likely to be used more by those other counties than to serve the people of Contra Costa County.

Even if the powers-that-be would close Concord's Buchanan Field, as they keep threatening to do, it is difficult to believe that people in West County would ever see Byron as a more viable alternative than driving to Oakland, Fremont, or even San Jose.

It seems like a long way to Oakland from Martinez, for example, but facing the prospect of driving the truly wretched stretch of Highway 4 that runs through Oakley and Brentwood, is enough to make the drive down 680 to Oakland or 880 to Fremont relatively inviting.

The airport remains tremendously underutilized. Some local residents don't even realize that we have an airport. The facility doesn't even have a flying service, so if you want to learn how to fly a plane or find an airplane sales and service dealer, don't bother driving out there.

The reason Contra Costa County decided to build an airport it didn't really need was that the FAA offered the County ninety cents on the dollar to build it.

The land cost us about $8,000,000 and the construction was $12,000,000, which made this a $20M total project.

It didn't matter, at that point, whether the county really needed an airport or not, because who ever passed up an opportunity to roll Washington over for $18M for something just because the money would be spent on something that wasn't really necessary? It's just taxpayers dollars, after all.

An EPA Money Pit
The airport was so expensive and so long under construction because of the relatively enormous environmental costs that became associated with the project. Researchers discovered endangered species including tricolor blackbirds, burrowing owls, fairy shrimp, tiger salamanders, and kit foxes.

Their solution for the kit fox was to set aside seven hundred acres as a habitat. The solution for the other species was simply to create an expensive catastrophe.

The environmental efforts associated with the airport development was an example of the truly awesome abilities of governmental regulation agencies, themselves under-regulated, to spend money like it is water. (Actually, that is not a perfectly good analogy, since water in East County is fairly valuable.)

Killing Endangered Species the Government Way
When the environmental impact people moved through the property before airport construction began, they discovered an area that they arbitrarily labeled "wetlands." As all of us old timers knew, the damp area actually marked the site of an old irrigation canal that had been leaking on a farmer's property for years. Finally, the farmer gave up, planted some tullies around the thing, and used it as a watering spot for his cows.

Refueling stop in the middle of a Byron field

The environmental impact people, however, insisted upon declaring the area to be wetland, so the county was forced to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to move the top eight inches of soil, together with associated bugs, shrimps, and salamanders, to a designated place behind the Byron Boys Ranch. The Boys Ranch spot was dry so the government paid additional money to dig two wells in order to keep the creatures alive.

Their mission complete, the environmental scientists left without hooking up the wells or regulating the area in any way. In a month, of course, the bugs, plants, etc. were all dead.

The failed project perfectly illustrates a typical bureaucratic mindset in my opinion. Those guys accomplished nothing worthwhile, except for spending their budget. I imagine they regard the experience as a great success. The goal never really is to actually preserve bugs and lizards, I think.

Getting a Handle on Change
I've been a board member on the Airport Land Use Commission for ten years. Seven of us make up the board and for years I was the only representative from this side of the hill. Today, however, three of us represent East County, including Brian Swisher, Phil Day, and myself. Phil is from Byron and is serving as Board Chairman. Brian Swisher is mayor of Brentwood.

Byron is a three-phase airport. Phase one, which is now complete, built two runways, one 4,500 feet long and the other is 3000 feet long.

Nothing on the books at this time calls for immediate action with the next two phases. They will be implemented, as needed.

During the past few years there was a push to turn the airport into a cargo carrier Airport, which could have supported UPS and United Parcel. Congressman Tauscher pushed through a $300,000 study that determined the idea wasn't feasible — which was something I could have told her for a quarter telephone call.

The problem with having a cargo carrier airport isn't the issue of economic growth, but of infrastructure, particularly transportation. Nobody is going to build four-lane highways between Byron and Concord or Stockton. Without expending much mental energy we can devise plans to get cargo in and out of Byron Airport in airplanes, but we just can't figure out what to do with it on the ground. There are already ten times too many trucks on Highway 4 than some of us are happy with.

Byron Airport, Photo © Aerial Expressions.

Appropriate Planning for the Future
I see an encouraging movement taking place out here, and in other areas around the county, in the growth of a genuine determination to learn lessons from the poor planning that has sometimes been carried out in the past in West County and parts of our East County. We all want to undertake development projects more intelligently the next time around.

A perfect airport is surrounded by nothing but ground squirrels. Just like ours! We are going to limit growth in the area in order to preserve it for appropriate development. The most hopeful prospect is that light industry will grow up around the airport. The site affords the perfect place for such development.

In 1990 Contra Costa County was redrawing their urban limit lines and offered to draw the line around the airport, encompassing the airport land that the County had just bought. In effect, the County now is in possession of almost all the land that can be developed in this area.

It is difficult to imagine what my great great grandparents ever would have thought if they could drop in for a day and see what became of their dusty farmland. They would have been astounded for sure. Even with our miserable roads and empty spaces Byron has evolved a transportation infrastructure and population density that would have astounded them.

And for sure if John Armstrong ever came back and saw a cluster of sky divers from the airport's Bay Area Skydiving club scattering out of the back of a plane like wind-blown leaves three miles above his head, he would have rushed inside the house and hidden himself under the bed.