The Harbour Grace Airstrip is an active airfield located in Harbour Grace, NL. The designation encompasses the current perimeters of the airstrip, Claude Stevenson’s former hangar, and Crow Hill, a nearby landmark for aviators.
Formal Recognition Type
Municipal Heritage Building Structure or Land
Heritage Value
The Harbour Grace Airstrip was designated a municipal heritage site by the Town of Harbour Grace due to its aesthetic and historic value.
The Harbour Grace Airstrip has aesthetic value as a unique representation of an early twentieth-century airfield – the first registered airstrip in Newfoundland and Labrador. The airstrip was constructed to accommodate the 1927 round-the-world flight of Waco Oil Company’s Pride of Detroit. Work began in earnest on August 8, 1927. With money and equipment from private investors and the Newfoundland government, local labourers clear-cut an area measuring 4,000 feet in length by 300 feet in width. The work took eighteen days, finishing on August 26, just in time for the arrival of the Pride of Detroit and pilot William S. Brock and Edward Schlee, president of Waco Oil Company. Originally, the airstrip had a crushed gravel surface. After years of ill-maintenance it went to grass. However, the pristine condition of the airstrip – tended for years by amateur aviator and enthusiast Claude Stevenson and recently by Canadian Owners and Pilots Association (COPA) Flight 97 – harkens back to the early days of transatlantic aviation, when twenty planes “challenged the Atlantic” for fame and glory.
The Harbour Grace Airstrip has historic value due to its place at the forefront of the province’s aviation heritage. The airstrip was home to twenty transatlantic flight attempts – some successful, some unsuccessful. No transatlantic flight was more famous than Amelia Earhart’s first solo transatlantic flight by a woman on May 20, 1932, when she left the Harbour Grace Airstrip and successfully landed in Culmore, outside Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Other notable alumni of the airstrip include Errol Boyd and Harry Connor, the first two Canadians to cross the Atlantic; the “Queen of Diamonds,” Broadway socialite Mabel Boll; and American flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker.
The airstrip was later leased to the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II, where it served as a high-frequency/direction-finding site. Radio operators for the RCN operated this station, attempting to intercept coded messages from German U-boats off the coast of Newfoundland.
The airstrip remains in active use, due to the dedicated work of volunteers such as the late Claude Stevenson and members of COPA Flight 97, an amateur aviators club. Claude Stevenson’s hangar remains as an example of this dedication and is a present-day reminder of the enthusiasts who kept the Harbour Grace Airstrip as a site worth utilizing and celebrating.
Source: Town of Harbour Grace Council Meeting September 20, 2022.
Character Defining Elements
All those features that relate to the aesthetic and historic value of the site, including;
-relatively flat, grass (formerly gravel) runway;
-Crow Hill, a natural landmark, used by aviators to locate the airstrip, with a recently developed footpath and stone cairn erected at the summit;
-uninterrupted viewplane of Lady Lake, home of the annual Harbour Grace Regatta;
-provincial plaque/monument detailing the significance and history of the airstrip, and;
-mid twentieth century sheet-metal hangar, used by local aviator and enthusiast Claude Stevenson.
Google map
Town of Harbour Grace Website - Harbour Grace Airstrip
