Billerica-Wilmington Airport Runway 1 East-West

Runway 1 East-West was the main runway of the Billerica - Wilmington Landing Field and Airport. It is traced from the "Sketch Plan of Billerica-Wilmington Landing Field & Airport" of August 1946 (Plan Book 69, Plan 63), which labels it "Runway #1 East - West" and draws it from Alexander Street east across the town line, so that its eastern end lay in Wilmington. On the plan it is about 2,300 feet long and about 275 feet wide (drawn, not lettered). Under the indenture of Nov. 1, 1946 with the Cities Service Oil Company (Book 1054, Page 18) the oil company was to put a bituminous surface on 47,000 square yards of the runway, about 185 feet wide over that length. Aeronautical charts listed a 2,200-foot paved runway in 1949 and 2,100 feet in May 1953; the field had opened in 1945 and was gone from the charts by 1955, after the 1954 foreclosure. A 1963 chart listed a private 1,300-foot bituminous strip at the site. The "Proposed Runways" on the same plan, one north and south and one northeast and southwest, are not drawn here.