On March 7, 1942, three months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the Port of Seattle undertook development of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport at the urging of the federal government. A new airport was desperately needed to help relieve pressure on Seattle’s Boeing Field and Tacoma’s McChord Field, which were commandeered for warplane production and military use in World War II.
Sea-Tac’s first runway was completed in 1944 and limited civilian operations began in 1947. Although hailed as the "state of the art" of airport design at the time, Sea-Tac was quickly overtaken by technological change and air-traffic growth in the 1950s. The first modern jetliner, the Boeing 707, born in Seattle in 1954, could not land at Sea-Tac until the airport’s main runway was lengthened to 8,500 feet in 1956 (it now stretches nearly 12,000 feet). This aerial photograph appears to have been taken just prior to the opening of the first concourse, the North Concourse (later Concourse D), in July 1959.
John Fraser Vallentyne (1928-2002) was an aerial photographer for The Boeing Co. and a staff photographer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in the 1950s-1960s.
Caption information source: "Sea-Tac International Airport: Third Runway Project," by Walt Crowley, http://www.historylink.org/File/4211 Caption information source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle%E2%80%93Tacoma_International_Airport Caption information source: "John F. Vallentyne, photographer, dies at 74," by D. Parvaz, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 1, 2002
