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Following WWI, the town of Forks remained a small community surrounded by prairie homesteads and dense forests. Throughout the 1920s, area logging companies-built hundreds of miles of rail in order to transport timber for milling. But the completion of the Olympic Loop Highway in 1931 proved to be an economic boon for Forks. Now, with reliable access to outside markets, area logging continued to grow.

(Excerpted from "WWII in Clallam County," by Lonnie Archibald) According to information acquired by Forks High school and UW graduate and historian Harvey Green it was nearly a year before the Japanese attacked Pear Harbor, the tensions between the U.S. and Japan heightened and the United States began a search for suitable sites to construct airfields.

In the early 1960s, NAAS Quillayute was transferred to the General Services Administration for disposal without restriction. Most of the property was acquired by the State of Washington in 1962 for us as “an emergency landing field.” At that time, the Federal Government transferred approximately 750 acres of the facility to the State of Washington (i.e., the airfield, etc.), with the remaining 450  acres being deeded and/or sold to between the Quillayute Valley School District and private parties. Upon its transfer the facility became known as the Quillayute State Airport.

www.QA4CR.org exists to promote the role of the Quillayute Airport as a community asset. As such, it is designed to support and encourage public discussion about the future and potential of the airport.

This summary of the Quillayute Airport Master Plan provides excerpts from the chapters of the plan, which outlines the goals, existing conditions, forecasts, facility requirements, alternatives analysis, implementation plan, and airport layout plan for the Quillayute Airport. It is intended as an overview of the 309 page report submitted to the City of Forks by Century West Engineering in January of 2024. It contains a link to the full report on the Century West website.

(Excerpt from City of Forks Quillayute Airport Master Plan, Drayton Archeology Report): The beginnings of military aviation in the United States can be traced to the American Civil War with the utilization of air balloons for reconnaissance and supply transport. Heavier than air flight began in the late 1890s when Samuel Pierpont Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, designed a steam-powered tandem-winged machine called an “aerodrome” (Kindy 2021). Once Wilbur and Orville Wright successfully developed the airplane into a practical flying machine, military application of the new technology was not far behind.

The Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) is updated annually during the City’s budgeting process. This is different from the City’s Transportation Improvement Plan, but similar in approach. Where the TIP lists transportation projects for a six-year period, the CIP will do that for capital projects for a seven year period.

Mentions of the Quillayute Airport in the minutes of Forks City Council meetings.

The PDF document linked below was submitted to the office of Hazard Mitigation Assistance at the Emergency Management Division of the Washington Military Department on August 9th, 2024. It represents a request for consideration of obtaining a $225,000 grant to provide emergency power and water at the Quillayute Airport.