HAFB — Military base has a story that spans several decades

As Utah's largest employer, Hill Air Force Base — with nearly 23,000 military and civilian personnel — is a vital part of the state and also Davis County's economy. But what is the story behind Hill? When and why did it originate? How did it receive its name?

• Hill AFB was originally named "Hill Field" in 1939, in honor of the late Maj. Ployer P. Hill. He was an aviation test pilot and instructor. Even though the base is located on a geographical hill, it is this pilot — who lost his life on Oct. 30, 1935, testing the original B-17 in Ohio — for whom the base is named. (The Army Transportation Corps also had a diesel engine, named "Major Hill," which handled freight cars at the base in the mid-1940s.)

• The base traces its beginning to 1934, when operation of a temporary Army Air Corps depot in Salt Lake City to support airmail operations focused attention on the area.

• In July 1934, the Air Corps Materiel Division recommended that a depot be located in northern Utah.

• The Ogden Chamber of Commerce took options on 4,265 acres of Davis County land in 1936 — including 386 acres it planned to donate to the government — as a prelude to get a base there.

• However, the base's current location was not the only area studied. Erda in Tooele County; west Salt Lake City in Salt Lake County; northwest Ogden in Weber County; west Clearfield in Davis County and south Kearns also in Salt Lake County were other areas studied for a potential air base in the mid-1930s.

• A military appropriations bill for 1940, approved by Congress in June 1939, included $8 million for construction of an air depot south of Ogden. The site for the new depot was officially named Hill Field on Dec. 1, 1939.

• Goundbreaking ceremonies, which included a 75-auto caravan to the site, were Jan. 12, 1940, in a snowstorm. However, work on the runways had begun in April 1938 and were completed by February 1940.

• By January 1941, the first civilian and military personnel arrived on base.

• By June 1941, there was on-base housing for 1,502 military personnel.

• After Pearl Harbor was bombed, the Army Air Corps moved many airplanes to Hill as a way to save them from a possible attack on the West Coast.

• Hill's innovative warehouse system soon became the model for other bases.