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Valley of the Sun
Home›Valley of the Sun›How did Sky Harbor International Airport Get its Name?

How did Sky Harbor International Airport Get its Name?

By Andrea Aker
June 16, 2010
8024
7

Excerpt from Valley 101: A Slightly Skewed Guide to Living in Arizona, a collection of Clay Thompson’s columns for The Arizona Republic. (Originally published January 14, 2001.)

Q: How did Sky Harbor International Airport get its name?

A: We take up this question with some reluctance because the entire staff and faculty of Valley 101 has a deep abhorrence of airports, which extends to even writing about them. At the same time, however, we always thought Sky Harbor was a cool name, in a 1950-ish, let’s-go-out-to-the-airport-and-watch-the-planes-land kind of way.

Actually, the name Sky Harbor goes back to 1929, a fact we found in Desert Wings, a history of the airport written by Michael Jones, a city Aviation Department employee.

According to Jones, Sky Harbor was named by J. Parker Van Zant, the owner of Scenic Airlines, who came here in 1928 looking for a Phoenix base for his company, “The Rainbow Route Across the Grand Canyon.”

There already were three airports in Phoenix, but Van Zant wanted his own place, so he bought 278 acres of cotton fields east of 24th Street and south of the Southern Pacific railroad tracks and turned it into a landing field.

According to Jones: “By February of 1929, the airport was officially titled Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. Whether the name came from a desire by Scenic to name all its airports Sky Harbor or by the idea of a “harbor” for aircraft, no one knows for sure.”

Scenic went broke later that year and sold the airport to a group of local investors, the Acme Investment Co.

In 1934, Acme leased the airport to Maricopa County, but the county backed out of the deal a year later. Acme pushed the city to buy the airport, and the city resisted until American Airlines, which had been using SkyHarbor since 1930, threatened to cut off passenger and airmail service. The city relented and bought the airport for $100,000 in July 1936.

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Tagsairportphoenixplace namessky harbortransportation

7 comments

  1. Jacked 23 June, 2010 at 16:02 Reply

    “Acme pushed the city to buy the airport, and the city resisted until American Airlines, which had been using SkyHarbor since 1930, threatened to cut off passenger and airmail service.”

    Anothe example of Arizona government entities who chuck and jive till a big, bad business tell them to get it together or else.

  2. How Did Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix Get its Name? | Russ Lyon Blog 29 November, 2010 at 12:24 Reply

    […] a history of the airport written by Michael Jones, a City of Phoenix Aviation Department employee. Arizona Oddities reports that, according to Jones, Sky Harbor was named by J. Parker Van Zant, the owner of Scenic […]

  3. david b moore 13 June, 2011 at 08:07 Reply

    Please give photo credits. Id like to know who shot the sky Harbor hdr shot

  4. Andrea Aker 13 June, 2011 at 16:25 Reply

    The photo is a stock image, purchased from istock.com.

  5. tekchic 16 December, 2013 at 09:50 Reply

    In Japanese, the kanji for “airport” is the kanji symbols for “sky” and “harbor” put together. Not sure where the origin for Phoenix Sky Harbor came from, but I found it interesting.

  6. Jim 2 May, 2014 at 02:00 Reply

    When did Sky Harbor become an International Airport?

  7. mark hanson 12 June, 2016 at 14:53 Reply

    my father had his plane there, but i was told in the early days it was called barry goldwater air port

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