Lowry Air Force Base

The neighborhood east of Denver you are passing through was, for more than half a century, one of the most important military training installations in the United States. Lowry Air Force Base opened in nineteen thirty-seven on the former grounds of a tuberculosis sanatorium, and it trained hundreds of thousands of men and women in the skills that won World War Two and held the line during the Cold War.

The base was named for Second Lieutenant Francis Lowry, a Denver native whose plane was shot down by German antiaircraft fire in World War One. When the Army Air Corps took over the old sanatorium grounds, the Works Progress Administration converted the facility into a proper air base with runways, hangars, and training buildings.

During World War Two, Lowry became a massive training center for aerial photographers and armorers, the specialists who maintained and loaded the guns and bombs on combat aircraft. Tens of thousands of men cycled through on their way to the Pacific and European theaters.

As the Cold War settled in, Lowry's mission shifted toward technical training. The base trained nuclear weapons technicians, one of the most sensitive jobs in the entire military, responsible for assembling and maintaining the weapons that formed the core of American deterrence. All flying activity at Lowry ceased in nineteen sixty-six, leaving the technical school as its entire reason for being.

The Cold War wound down, and so did Lowry. The Defense Base Realignment and Closure process selected it for shutdown in nineteen ninety-one. The last unit inactivated in April of nineteen ninety-four, and the base officially closed that September. Today the grounds have been converted to parks, schools, and mixed-income housing, a transformation that has become a national model for base redevelopment.