Neal Koellish shared this story.

We moved to Santa Maria in 1959 and I can remember seeing Machado field right next to the freeway as it intersected the river. Later, during my many trips to the SLO dump, I remember that you could look just to the east and see Weir field. I think it’s been taken over by the dump now but, in any event, someone was killed in an accident there and that seemed to be the end of it. [More info.]

I was at Cal Poly the day a family crashed in a takeoff accident during Poly Royal and that was the end of that one too. The approach was fun as you passed right over the admin building with not a lot of altitude. [I believe the soccer fields are where the old airfield used to be. [More info. JS]

As a kid, much of the old field at Hancock college was still visible. Today only a few of the old hangars remain. In 1959, one said St. Louis, Mo. which I thought odd until I found out later that it had been used to film a movie about Lindbergh. [ More info. JS]

Historical Sectionals to waste time on

The Library of Congress has Sectional aeronautical charts going back to at least the thirties. We are on the San Francisco chart and this link will take you to the end of San Diego and the beginning of San Francisco. If you are interested in seeing Los Angeles charts, use this link.

This is part of September 1954 showing three airports in SLO: Cal Poly airport; the current airport, and one in Edna (Weir). There are also three airports in Santa Maria (The one west of the city is the old Hancock Field. I haven’t heard any mention of Machado Field.) and Oceano airport was apparently named Pismo Beach. And surprisingly an airport in Morro Bay. (Sky Lawn)

There were no electronic means of navigating directly to SLO but you could get close with the Paso Robles VOR or an amber airway. You can see the 153° radial of the Paso Robles VOR along the right. The magenta line is the side of an amber airway—Amber 8. Amber airways are L/MF airways based on non-directional beacons (NDB) and are identified as green, red, amber, or blue. This one is based on the Santa Barbara NDB (SBA) with a frequency of 350.