Hobby Airport: The Field That Had Three Names Before It Kept One

Houston's airport opened in June nineteen twenty-seven as W. T. Carter Field, a six-hundred-acre landing strip in South Houston.

The city bought it in nineteen thirty-seven and renamed it Houston Municipal Airport. A year later the airport was renamed Howard R. Hughes Airport after Howard Hughes, who funded the first control tower.

But federal regulations said improvement funds couldn't flow to an airport named after a living person, so the city dropped the name and went back to Houston Municipal. In nineteen sixty-seven, the airport was finally renamed William P. Hobby Airport, after the former Texas governor and Houston civic leader whose family had deep ties to the city.

Hobby Airport has operated continuously under that name ever since, now serving as Houston's closer-in, secondary airport.