page_title: Bernard's Airport
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Bernard's Airport / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Bernard Airport 1934. Historical images of Beaverton, Oregon.
context_page_description: Bernard's Airport, also known as Bernard Airport, was a non-commercial airfield in Beaverton, Oregon, United States, from 1928 to 1969. In its early years, it was one of two private airports located in Beaverton, the other being Watts Field, about one-half mile to the south of Bernard's Airport. The Bernard Airport site was redeveloped in 1969 as "Bernard's Beaverton Mall", now known as Cedar Hills Crossing.
context_section_description: Both of Beaverton's airports were opened in the latter half of the 1920s.  The first was Watts Field, or Watts Airport, located on the west side of Erickson Avenue, along what is now 6th Street, to the southwest of the center of town.  Different sources give its opening year as either circa 1925–26 or 1928.
  Its site was originally developed as a motion picture studio in 1922, Premium Picture Productions opening its Beaverton Studios on the site in that year.  The airport was named for Dr. G.E. Watts, the financier behind the film venture in Beaverton, who was also an aviation enthusiast.  Premium Pictures went out of business in late 1925, after filmmaking on the West Coast became concentrated in Hollywood, and in 1928 the buildings were sold to Davis-Langman Aircraft Corporation, but G.E. Watts remained an investor. The 33-acre (130,000 m²) film studio site was converted into an airstrip.  In 1929, the facilities were sold to the Breese Aircraft Corporation (of San Francisco), for use in aircraft manufacturing.  The first airplane manufactured in Beaverton was launched in April 1930, and the Watts airstrip was used for many test flights.
  Later in 1928, Beaverton's second airport began to take shape, as Charles Bernard  erected the first hangar along what is now Cedar Hills Blvd. (then Cedar Street), to the northwest of the center of Beaverton. Named Bernard's Airport, it was located about one-half mile north of Watts Airport, immediately north of Beaverton Creek (with its south end just south of present-day Hall Blvd.).
  Air & Space/Smithsonian has stated that the real history of grassroots aviation in Oregon began in "the hayfields of Beaverton" (i.e. Watts Field and Bernard's Airport), where aircraft innovation design achieved a wide circle of inventors and pilots.  As of 1932, Watts Airport had 60 acres (240,000 m²) of land, with 10 airplanes based there (and room for 40 planes), and was the third-busiest of nine airports then operating in the Portland metropolitan area, while Bernard's Airport occupied 30 acres (120,000 m²) and had only three planes based there at that time.
caption: Bernard Airport in 1934
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "NIKON", "Image Model": "E5000", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2003:08:28 15:23:07", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "228", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "806", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "2402", "EXIF ExposureTime": "5/21", "EXIF FNumber": "38/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "140", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2003:09:26 12:13:42", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2003:09:26 12:13:42", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "107/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1868", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1096", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed"}