Port Kingman was the airfield Transcontinental Air Transport built at Kingman in 1929, on a site chosen by Charles Lindbergh, the airline's technical adviser, while he laid out its coast-to-coast route. TAT sold a 48-hour crossing of the country that flew passengers by day and put them on trains at night: an overnight Pennsylvania Railroad train to Columbus, a Ford Trimotor to Waynoka, Oklahoma, a Santa Fe train to Clovis, New Mexico, then a second Trimotor to Los Angeles with three stops on the way. Kingman was the first refuelling stop eastbound out of Los Angeles. The transcontinental service began on 7 July 1929, and Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart were among the first passengers through Kingman that July; local accounts date the field's dedication variously to late June and 8 July 1929.
Kingman counts it as the first commercial airport in Arizona. It replaced Wallapai Field, an earlier strip across from the Mountain View Cemetery, and was itself replaced in the 1940s by the much larger wartime field northeast of town that is now Kingman Airport. TAT did not last as long as its airport: in 1930 it was merged with Western Air Express to form Transcontinental and Western Air, the company later known as TWA.
The terminal, reached from Bank Street, is one of the few TAT terminal buildings still standing; another survives at Winslow. It has since been put to other uses, including offices for a local drilling company.
Getting there
35.2213, -114.0114
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