Cherry Point: Home of the Marine Corps' Largest Air Station

In the summer of nineteen forty, the Marine Corps searched the East Coast for a new air base and settled on a stretch of Craven County farmland along the Neuse River. Congress approved the station in nineteen forty-one with an initial appropriation of about fifteen million dollars. On September fourth of that year, before a single building was finished, the site was officially named Cunningham Field in honor of Lieutenant Colonel Alfred A.

Cunningham, the first Marine officer ever to earn his wings as an aviator. Ground clearing began in August nineteen forty-one, and the station was formally commissioned as Cunningham Field on May twentieth, nineteen forty-two, and later renamed Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point. Today it is the largest Marine Corps air station on the East Coast.