Stapleton International Airport
| Stapleton International Airport | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Stapleton highlighted on a map of Denver neighborhoods
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| Airport type | Public, Defunct | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Serves | Stapleton, Denver, Colorado, United States | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Location | Stapleton, Denver, Colorado | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Coordinates | 39°45′38.6″N 104°53′31.1″W / 39.760722°N 104.891972°WCoordinates: 39°45′38.6″N 104°53′31.1″W / 39.760722°N 104.891972°W | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 DEN
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Stapleton International Airport was the primary airport serving Denver, Colorado, United States from 1929 to 1995. At different times it served as a hub for Continental Airlines, the original Frontier Airlines, People Express, Trans World Airlines (TWA), United Airlines and Western Airlines. Other airlines with smaller hub operations at Stapleton included Aspen Airways, the current version of Frontier Airlines and Rocky Mountain Airways with all three of these air carriers being based in Denver at the time.
In 1995, Stapleton was replaced by Denver International Airport. It has since been decommissioned and the property redeveloped as a retail and residential neighborhood.
Stapleton opened on October 17, 1929, as Denver Municipal Airport. Its name became Stapleton Airfield after a 1944 expansion, in honor of Benjamin F. Stapleton, the city's mayor most of the time from 1923 to 1947, and the force behind the project when it began in 1928. Concourse A, the original building from 1929, was still in use when the airport closed. The airport was created by Ira Boyd Humphreys in 1919.
The March 1939 Official Aviation Guide shows nine weekday departures: seven United and two Continental. The April 1957 shows 38 United, 12 Continental, seven Braniff, seven Frontier, seven Western, five TWA and one Central. The jet age arrived during the summer of 1959 when Continental began operating Boeing 707 jetliners into Stapleton.
Runway 17/35 and a new terminal building opened in 1964. Concourse D was built in 1972. After deregulation three airlines had hubs at Stapleton: (Frontier Airlines, Continental Airlines, and United Airlines). To combat congestion runway 18/36 was added in the 1980s and the terminal was again expanded with the $250 million (or $58 million according to the New York Times) 24 gate Concourse E opening in 1988, despite Denver's replacement airport already under construction. When it closed in 1995 Stapleton had six runways (2 sets of 3 parallel runways) and five terminal concourses.
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Wikipedia