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HISTORY
OF THE AIRPORT CORRIDOR
From the dawn of
recorded history, the region that we know today as the
Pittsburgh Airport Corridor has been a transportation center
as well as a frontier and a gateway to wide open spaces.
When European troops
and settlers arrived in the region in the 18th
Century, they found fertile, hilly woodlands and expansive
forests thick with trees ranked along the banks of the
Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers, extending as far as
the eye could see and rich with wildlife.
What they also found
were a great number of canoes – state of the art
transportation – beached along the river banks. The
region had been settled for thousands of years by several
Native American tribes – the Shawnee, Seneca, Delaware and
Iroquois.
THE
WEST HILLS
Through the 1800s,
today’s Pittsburgh Airport Corridor was thinly settled
farmland. Towns sprang up along the Ohio River to move goods
in and out of the region. Inland, communities clustered around
general stores and churches, which served the agricultural
community.
It wasn’t until
booming industrial growth along the three rivers took off in
the 19th Century that tug boats, barges and
railroads appeared on the scene, creating heavy transportation
capabilities. These transportation modes gave the region
tremendous commercial advantage as well as an influx of new
settlers who established towns in the hills and valleys west
of the city.
Air travel during the
first half of the 20th Century was accommodated by
a series of smaller airports in Pittsburgh’s South Hills
suburbs, culminating in the Allegheny County Airport, 1931 to
1952. However, the lack of major highways and the general
character of air travel in those days soon drove air
transportation out of that densely populated part of the
region.
GREATER
PITT
Allegheny County
officials looked to the open spaces of the West Hills, where
the noise and pollution would inconvenience a relatively small
number of farmers, livestock and townspeople. Greater
Pittsburgh Airport (later to be known as Greater Pittsburgh
International Airport) opened in Moon Township in 1952 Six
years in the building, the $30 million facility was one of the
nation’s finest.
The new airport was
an enormous economic engine, growing in step with the
burgeoning air travel industry. In its first full year of
operation, Greater Pitt landed 1.4 million passengers. By
1986, it was landing 1.4 million per month.
The airport generated
tens of thousands of jobs, which in turn triggered housing
commerce, small business, schools, churches and all the
amenities of suburban life.
As a consequence, the
"Pittsburgh Airport Corridor" was born. Just as the
Ohio, Monongahela and Allegheny rivers spawned communities
during the 18th Century, the new Parkway West –
linking Downtown Pittsburgh and the airport – powered land
transportation and residential and commercial development
along the 16-mile, high-speed ribbon of concrete.
THE
NEW AIRPORT
By the 1980s, it was
obvious that the 30-year old Greater Pitt had reached its
capacity and was obsolete in the face of the unprecedented and
unexpected boom in the air travel. The terminal, once
described by tax-wary residents as "The Taj Mahal,"
was land-locked by runways and operation facilities. It could
not be adequately expanded to meet current – much less,
future – air travel needs.
A new site in Findlay
Township, just west of the former terminal building was
selected to house the airport’s two new terminals.
Pittsburgh International Airport opened for business in
October 1992 after an expenditure of nearly $1 billion.
"PIT," as it is known in the industry, is configured
to accommodate 35 million passengers per year.
Significantly, PIT
was designed to avoid the gridlock that resulted from growth
at the old facility. Pittsburgh International is modular and
readily expandable to service 50 million passengers annually,
if demand requires it.
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