Built as a private landing strip in 1933 by mine owner and horse breeder Errol MacBoyle to transport gold from his mining interests here to the mint in San Francisco, the original 1,800-foot runway has been extended several times and is now nearly 4,700 feet in length. With the installation of floodlights in the fall of 1934, newspapers in California hailed the system, noting that it made MacBoyle’s runway “the best equipped private landing field in the district.” When World War Two erupted, however, mines were closed “for the duration,” and the landing strip was, for the most part, abandoned until 1955, when Charles Litton, founder of Litton Industries, purchased the property and surrounding area from the MacBoyle estate. Litton spent $10,000 rehabilitating MacBoyle’s long-neglected facility, and the Grass Valley Chamber of Commerce stepped forward to head a fundraising effort that enhanced Litton’s project. With the Chamber’s leadership –– and support from Grass Valley, Nevada City, and Nevada County governments –– Loma Rica Airport formally opened in 1956, located along Loma Rica Drive, southeast of Grass Valley. Later, it became a base for state and federal firefighting aircraft, as well as a retardant mixing plant –– the forerunner of today’s Air Attack Base operation. The firefighting effort began with converted crop dusters, but larger aircraft were soon stationed there, positioned for quick response time when forest lookout stations on Banner Mountain, Wolf Mountain, Grouse Ridge, Columbia Hill and elsewhere spotted fires. Did you know that the Grass Valley Air Attack Base played a role in the Disney Film “Planes: Fire & Rescue”? Richard Cordova told us, “About four years ago, Disney came along, and they were doing a sequel to their “Planes” movie. They wanted to get some research done, and our department agreed with them that we would help them out on trying to get the right information out that they needed.” The Grass Valley Air Attack base was used as inspiration for some of the architecture in the film.
