IUAB COUNTY IN THE WORLD WAR II ERA
241
Nephi baseball club pose for a team picture, 1940s. (Waldon Reed) On 25 September 1948 the Nephi Airport was dedicated. It had been almost fourteen years since Nephi city officials had first considered this project. In lanuary 1934, R. Hawkins, S. Forrest, and L.C. Warenski of the Nephi Kiwanis Club met with council members. They had talked with a government agent, who told them that money would be appropriated for labor and material for hangers if Nephi City would lease land for the airport with an option to buy. At their next meeting, however, the council members decided that they could not see their way clear to enter into a contract at that time. 57 In 1938 city officials purchased a piece of ground west of the railroad tracks a n d n o r t h of Meadow Lane. This land proved to be unsuitable—it was too close to the mountains and did not provide enough room for an east-west runway.58 By 1944 the officials decided to exercise options on a 160-acre piece of land, which they purchased at a cost of $8,000.59 In the spring of 1945 a landing strip was built on the field and m e m b e r s of the Kiwanis Club organized the Nephi Flying Club and purchased a plane. Many of them learned to fly. That same year, the city constructed an office building and installed a telephone at the facility. In the spring of 1946, the Nephi Flying Club built a two-plane hanger, and the next year Dudley Bray built a fortyby-sixty-foot q u o n s e t - h u t hanger, an office, and living quarters.
