Rantoul: Chanute Field and Seventy-Six Years of Air Force Training

Rantoul's defining story is Chanute Field, established on May twenty-first, nineteen seventeen, one of thirty-two Air Service training camps opened after the United States entered World War One. The War Department chose Rantoul because the land was flat, the Illinois Central ran through it, and the University of Illinois ground school was nearby. Two thousand men and two hundred teams of horses built the base in two months.

For seventy-six years, Chanute was the Air Force's center for technical training, teaching aircraft mechanics, parachute packing, and aviation maintenance to generations of airmen. At its close on September thirtieth, nineteen ninety-three, it was the third-oldest active Air Force base in the country. Today the two-thousand-acre site is a civilian redevelopment zone, and the Chanute Field Historic District is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.