The Air Force Academy: Arguing Over Where to Build It
Near Manitou Springs, Colorado
When Congress authorized the creation of the United States Air Force Academy in April of nineteen fifty-four, nobody had yet decided where to build it. The Air Force Site Selection Commission reviewed more than five hundred fifty proposals from forty-five states. Every congressional delegation in the country lobbied for the institution.
It was understood that an Air Force Academy would anchor enormous federal investment and transform whatever region it landed in. The commission narrowed the list to three finalists: a site eight miles north of Colorado Springs, a site on the south shore of Lake Geneva in Wisconsin, and a site about ten miles west of Alton, Illinois. Colorado Springs, which had already been building a military identity around Fort Carson and Peterson Air Force Base, pressed its case aggressively.
The local congressional delegation and business community made clear that the region wanted it and had the infrastructure to support it. Colorado Springs won. The selection was announced in June of nineteen fifty-four.
The Academy opened its first classes in temporary quarters at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver in July of nineteen fifty-five, with the permanent campus still under construction north of town. The first class graduated and was commissioned on June third, nineteen fifty-nine. The campus was designed by the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, and the centerpiece is the Air Force Academy Chapel, completed in nineteen sixty-two, with seventeen spires of aluminum and glass rising one hundred fifty feet above the Rampart Range foothills.
It remains one of the most visited sites in Colorado. The Academy today enrolls about four thousand cadets and graduates officers who serve in every branch of air and space warfare.
