NEVADA

Active:  93      Closed/Inactive:  173       Total:   266

Unknowns:  34

This is a major update that includes pictures (where available) of Nevada airfields.  This major update includes updates and correction of some errors.  Some data has been better determined (coordinates) and more photograph evaluation.  There has been a small decrease in the number of active airfields in Nevada.  Thus the total number of closed goes down due to better understand and consolidate of some airfields that had previously been considered different airfields but were the same.

This is the first release of a new state data base listing active and inactive/closed airfields for the state of Nevada.  The data is divided into two parts.  First part are towns A to L and second part is M to Z.

There are a number of "unknown" airfields listed in this data base.  Some are clearly those used by the military and are located on the large Nellis Range and others are scattered around at other military installations (e.g. Fallon NAAS and Tonopah Test Range).  Most of these airfields are target airfields and highly unlikely any aerial operations are or have taken place on them.  Many have objects on the "field" (e.g. mockup or real aircraft) and many have bomb pock marks on them.

There are a number of "unidentified" airfields that have been located using Terraserver and Google Earth.  This have been listed as "unidentified -----".  There were also some airfields that were charted as "unidentified" too but most of those have been cross referenced to airfields that had been previously charted and reported.

There are a number of interesting airfields in Nevada.  One is the history of Nellis AFB which started out as Las Vegas's original civil airport and was turned over to the Army Air Forces in World War 2.  Shortly after then end of the war, the airfield was jointly used for civil operations by several airlines serving Las Vegas and the Air Force.

There is the highly publicized Area 51.  Google Earth has high resolution color pictures taken fairly recently (2005 approximately).  There are several runways on Groom Lake at Area 51 which are interesting.  One can speculate as to what they are used for but they appear to have had little service as no tire streaks are visible.

There is also target airfield close to Nellis AFB which appears to have been used heavily as a target.