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Why there’s no commercial airline in San Juan County, N.M.

An American Airlines passenger jet waits to be deiced on Thursday, Feb. 8, 2024, before takeoff at the Durango-La Plata County Airport. (Jerry McBride/Durango Herald file)

Dear Mr. Know-It-All:

How did mountainous, wintry La Plata County get the region's commercial airport instead of wide-open, drier Crouch Mesa? Is it true that the powers that be in San Juan County blinked or balked and Southwest Colorado jumped?

– Frequent flyer

Dear frequent flyer,

Mr. Know-It-All is old enough, perhaps you are also, to remember being able to drive to the Four Corners Regional Airport in Farmington, use the free long-term parking lot and hop on a flight.

Sadly, the last commercial flights took off more than seven years ago and haven’t returned, but the Durango-La Plata County airport certainly has picked up the slack, setting airline passenger records year after year. Despite its convenient location, the Four Corners Regional Airport is hampered by geography. The airport, just northwest of downtown, is set on a mesa, which limits the length of airport runways to 6,500 feet and limits the size of commercial airplanes that can use the facility.

To Farmington’s credit, the city has secured millions of dollars in funding to add safety equipment and the end of the runways to meet safety standards for smaller-sized commercial airlines, but unfortunately, no carrier has indicated a desire to bring commercial air service back to Farmington. City officials will tell you discussions are still ongoing with that goal in mind.

So, could Farmington and San Juan County’s dearth of commercial air service turned out differently had our airport been moved from its correct location? That’s certainly an intriguing thought and Mr. Know-It-All reached out to San Juan County historian Mike Maddox for the details about the work to make our area a highflier in the air travel industry.

Mr. Know-It-All learned of at least four separate occasions over nearly two decades when local officials seriously talked about building a new airport in San Juan County.

Maddox says his research from old editions of the Farmington Daily Times, found the first discussions about a new airport happened in February 1959. Keep in mind, this is during the natural gas boom and the area was growing by leaps and bounds, but Crouch Mesa, strategically located between the three San Juan County populations centers of Farmington, Aztec and Bloomfield, was still a pretty empty place.

Mike Maddox told me he remembers seeing herds of pronghorns roaming the mesa along with scattered farms and ranches. So, it was during this time that the San Juan County Commission hired an engineering firm from Santa Fe to study Crouch Mesa as a possible airport site. The study was not to exceed $1,000 and Maddox recalls it did not take into account to busy Farmington airport that was doing just fine, thank you very much, on top of that mesa near downtown.

The newly paved Runway 5 with tower and terminal in the background at Farmington's Four Corners Regional Airport in 2023.

Fast-forward by almost a decade to 1968: Maddox says the County Commission reached out to officials from Farmington, Aztec and Bloomfield to discuss the idea of building a jet-capable airport on Crouch Mesa. Development was coming, and the mesa had some gas lines installed, but it was felt the site could still be used. Maddox also discovered two other sites were part of these discussions: a site west of the Bisti Highway (New Mexico 371) southwest of Farmington and another site on the mesa north of Harper Hill. Obviously, nothing came from those talks.

Four years later in 1972, another study was commissioned by the county. This time the price tag was $57,000. Airlines had been moving to replace their fleets with jets and this study found to build the ‘Crouch Mesa Jetport,’ as it was named, would cost $26 million Meanwhile, as the area’s growth continued, a real estate developer began buying up property on Crouch Mesa, limiting potential sites for any airport project. Also, during this time, Durango and La Plata County were making plans for a jet-capable airport with a 9,200-foot runway.

The idea for a Crouch Mesa Jetport wasn’t dead, but it would soon be after the public overwhelmingly voted down a bond issue that would have raised $5.5 million. The public’s rejection of the idea and the quickly developing area of Crouch Mesa meant the area’s airport would stay on the mesa. Meanwhile, in 1988 Durango and LaPlata County were moving full-speed ahead, opening a larger airport terminal building to take advantage of their implementation of a longer runway further capitalizing on tourist travelers.

Mr. Know-It-All hopes commercial air service may one day return to Farmington but that seems like a tall order because of ever changing airport safety and pilot flight regulations coupled with the airport’s mesa top locked property. A look at the airport’s Facebook page shows no new posts in over a year.

Mr. Know-It-All is Scott Michlin, the general manager of KSJE 90.9FM community-supported radio at San Juan College. He also teaches public speaking and mass media classes at SJC, and serves on the board of directors for San Juan United Way, Presbyterian Medical Services and the San Juan Symphony.

If you have a question about something in San Juan County, drop me a line at smichlin@tricityrecordnm.com. If I don’t know the answer, I know someone who does, and you’ll read about it here in the Tri-City Record.