San Luis Obispo Airports
The San Luis Obispo History Museum is planning on an exhibit The History of Aviation in San Luis Obispo County. We have some information from presentations and lots more is readily available online.
In addition to the three public airports in the county, San Luis Obispo (KSBP), Paso Robles (KPRB), and Ocedano (L52) there a a number of private airstrips still in use in the county and a bunch that are closed. Wikipedia is a surprisingly good source early information on KSPB although it is out of date on current FBOs and airline flights. I don’t believe the airport is still called McChensey Field either—at least not on any FAA charts, the ASOS, or approach plates where it is officially called the San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport. The airport itself has some early history. Wikipedia also has a good page about Paso Roblesbut starts late and is again out of date on the current FBOs. The City of Paso Robles has a short page detailing the start of construction and subsequent transfers: On September 3, 1942 construction began on the Airfield, which was to be used as a Marine Corps Bomber Base. On April 8, 1943, the field was dedicated as Estrella Army Airfield to be used by the Army Air Corps. Estrella Army Airfield consisted of 1259 acres of land, two 4,700-foot long runways, an operations building and a small, three bay fire station. Wikipedia has a page for Oceano but no real information. The Friends of Oceano airport narrows down that construction date a bit. They claim: Oceano Airport was built in the 1950's to serve the communities of Pismo Beach, Oceano and Grover City. but that conflicts with the fact that it appears on the February 1948 chart.
There have been a number of accidents and incidents at the local airports and during COVID we had post about them instead of a meeting. There have been a number of crashes that shut down the runway since then, but I don’t recall any fatalities.
Jim Gregory is a local history teacher who wrote a book about Central Coast Aviators in WWII and came to talk to us about them in November of 2023. It focuses on local pilots and touches on the training facilities at Cal Poly and the San Luis Obispo and Santa Maria airports.
There is a docent at the Santa Maria Museum of Flight that knows a lot about local history and came to talk to us in November of 2024. He’s usually at the museum on weekends if you want to hear an interesting guy talk about local airport history.
There were several airports near San Luis Obispo but now only the main airport and Oceano Airport remain. The Cal Poly airfield was active in recent memory and one of our members witnessed a crash there and actually had a foreced landing there. By 1985 it was closed. According to Cal Poly Magazine, The Army Engineers from the 329th Engineering Battalion of the 104th Infantry Division at Camp San Luis Obispo construct an airstrip, originally 3,000 by 300 feet long. The construction work on the airstrip was part of a practical project for the heavy equipment and surveying schools of the Timberwolf post-war training program. In return, Cal Poly instructors held classes in surveying and engineering for men of the engineering battalion. The airstrip was a Federal Aviation Administration approved landing site. The airstrip was closed in 1947 but was used into the 1980s by the Aeronautical Engineering Department..
Clark Field was a marked as Auxiliary Field in 1933 and replaced circa 1939 by the new San Luis Obispo Airport, located nearby to the east. By the time the April 1941 San Francisco Sectional Chart was released, Clark Field was no longer depicted and San Luis Obispo is shown as a Comercial or Municipal Airport.
The Tribune ran an article in 2017 when the new terminal opened that has lots of pictures from the 1960s, 1980s, and 2000s. The only building that remains in this photo is the old terminal building which is now the Spirit of San Luis restaurant.
The Tribune also ran a lengthy article on Sherwood Air Field. The airfield’s history goes back at least to 1929. That year a directory of landing fields said the Paso Robles airport had a 2,000-foot main runway and one small hangar.
It looks like San Luis was on the San Francisco charts for quite a while. By 1948 the chart shows Oceano and Sky Lawn Airport in Morrow Bay. Note that the magnetic deviation was 16°30’ in 1948 and just recently changed to more like 12° since the North Pole has gone walkabout. The legendindicates the only navigational guidance—Airway Light Beacons and Landmark Light Beacons.