Palm Beach International Airport origins
Palm Beach International Airport traces its origins to 1936, when a small airfield on the outskirts of West Palm Beach, Florida, first opened under the name Morrison Field. Named in honor of Grace K. Morrison, a key participant in the early planning and organizing of the facility, the airport has grown from a modest regional airstrip into the primary commercial aviation gateway serving Palm Beach County. Its history reflects broader patterns in American aviation development, municipal ambition, and the evolving relationship between South Florida communities and air travel. Over the decades, the airport has also become the subject of contemporary political debate, including recent legislative efforts in Florida to rename it in honor of a sitting and former president. Understanding the airport's origins requires examining its founding context, the role of the individual after whom it was first named, and the long arc of institutional change that followed.
The Founding of Morrison Field
Morrison Field came into existence in 1936 at a time when commercial and civilian aviation in the United States was still in its formative years. The mid-1930s were a period of rapid expansion for regional airports across the country, driven in part by federal investment in infrastructure and the growing public enthusiasm for air travel as a practical and modern mode of transportation. West Palm Beach, already an established resort and commercial center on Florida's Atlantic coast, recognized the economic and logistical advantages that a local airfield could provide.
The field was named Morrison Field from its inception, a designation that honored Grace K. Morrison for her contributions to the project's development.[1] According to the airport's own historical records, Morrison was a pioneer in the early planning and organizing of the facility, making her one of the relatively few women of her era to be formally recognized with the naming of a significant piece of public infrastructure. The choice to memorialize her contribution through the airport's name reflects the extent to which her involvement was considered central to the project's realization.
The physical location chosen for the airfield placed it within reasonable proximity to the city of West Palm Beach itself, allowing for practical access by passengers, cargo operators, and the various commercial interests that would depend on reliable air connections to other Florida cities and to destinations further afield. In the 1930s, the landscape of South Florida was still developing rapidly, and the establishment of an airfield was understood as a civic investment with long-term implications for the region's economic trajectory.
Grace K. Morrison and Her Role
Grace K. Morrison is the foundational figure in the airport's early history. While detailed biographical records about her life are not extensively catalogued in publicly available sources, the sources that do reference her are consistent in describing her as instrumental in the planning and organizational stages that made the airport possible.[2]
The decision to name the airfield after her was not a routine administrative gesture. In the context of 1930s America, the formal recognition of a woman's contributions to a major public infrastructure project through an institutional naming was a meaningful and relatively uncommon act. It signals that Morrison's participation in the project was substantive enough to be considered worthy of permanent commemoration. Whether her role was primarily civic, financial, organizational, or some combination of these factors is not fully elaborated in the sources currently available, but her influence on the airport's founding is not in dispute.
The airport's official history acknowledges Morrison directly, stating that the facility "was named for Miss Grace K. Morrison, who was a pioneer in the early planning and organizing."[3] This phrasing, drawn from the airport's own institutional records, establishes her as a genuine participant in the project rather than a nominal honoree, and it places her contribution at the foundational stage of the airport's existence rather than in any later period of development or expansion.
From Morrison Field to Palm Beach International Airport
The name Morrison Field did not remain the airport's permanent designation. Over the decades following its 1936 founding, the facility underwent changes in both its physical infrastructure and its administrative identity, eventually transitioning to the name by which it has been reported today: Palm Beach International Airport, commonly abbreviated as PBI.[4]
The shift in name reflected the airport's growth from a local airfield into a regional hub serving a much larger population and commercial base. The name "Palm Beach International" conveyed both the geographic identity of the region and the expanded scope of the airport's operations. The IATA airport code PBI, derived from the earlier Palm Beach International designation, remains in use today and serves as a practical legacy of the name transition.
Throughout this period of institutional evolution, the original Morrison Field designation was not erased from the historical record, and the airport's official history continues to acknowledge its 1936 origins and the individual after whom it was first named. This continuity of historical memory, preserved in the airport's own published materials, ensures that Grace K. Morrison's role in the airport's founding is not lost despite the renaming that occurred in later years.
The Airport in the Context of South Florida Aviation
The establishment of Morrison Field in 1936 placed West Palm Beach within a developing network of Florida airports that were being constructed and expanded during the same general period. Florida's geography, climate, and growing population made it a natural focus for aviation infrastructure investment, and cities throughout the state were competing to establish airfields that could attract commercial carriers and provide their communities with access to the national air travel system.
For West Palm Beach specifically, the creation of an airport was part of a broader effort to assert the city's position as a significant urban center on Florida's Atlantic coast, distinct from and complementary to the resort community of Palm Beach located across Lake Worth Lagoon. An airport capable of handling commercial traffic was a marker of civic modernity in the 1930s, and Morrison Field served that symbolic as well as practical function from its opening.
The airport's location in Palm Beach County also positioned it to serve not only the immediate West Palm Beach metropolitan area but also the broader expanse of communities stretching along the coast and inland across the county. This regional service function has remained central to the airport's identity across its entire history, and it helps explain why the eventual renaming to Palm Beach International Airport, rather than a name more specifically tied to West Palm Beach alone, made practical and political sense.
Contemporary Naming Debates
The question of what to call the airport has reemerged in a contemporary political context. Florida lawmakers have considered legislation that would rename Palm Beach International Airport after President Donald Trump, whose Mar-a-Lago estate is located in the nearby town of Palm Beach.[5] The Florida Senate passed legislation toward this end, bringing the proposal into public debate and raising questions about the airport's institutional identity, its relationship to the communities it serves, and the appropriate criteria for naming major public infrastructure.[6]
The renaming debate has unfolded alongside separate but related controversies, including reports that the Trump family business filed for trademark rights connected to any such name change.[7] These parallel developments have added complexity to what might otherwise be a straightforward legislative question, drawing the airport's naming into broader discussions about the intersection of political symbolism, commercial interest, and public infrastructure governance.
For historians and residents interested in the airport's origins, the contemporary naming debate serves as an inadvertent reminder of how significant the act of naming public institutions can be. The original decision to call the facility Morrison Field in 1936 was itself a deliberate act of recognition and commemoration, one that preserved Grace K. Morrison's contribution to the airport's founding for nearly a century. Any future renaming would similarly carry institutional weight, replacing one set of associations with another and reshaping the way subsequent generations understand the airport's identity and history.
Legacy of the 1936 Founding
The founding of Morrison Field in 1936 established the infrastructure foundation upon which Palm Beach International Airport was built. The nearly nine decades of operation that have followed the original opening have transformed the facility beyond anything that could have been anticipated at its founding, with modern terminals, expanded runways, and service by multiple commercial carriers connecting the region to destinations across the United States and beyond.
Nevertheless, the 1936 date remains the anchor of the airport's institutional history, and the name Morrison Field remains the beginning of that history. Grace K. Morrison, honored through that original naming, occupies a permanent place in the airport's founding narrative as someone whose early efforts in planning and organizing contributed to making the facility a reality.[8]
The airport's history is, in this sense, a record of continuity and change — a facility that began with a specific local identity tied to an individual's civic contribution and evolved over time into a regional institution serving a much broader public. The debates of the present day about the airport's name are themselves part of that ongoing history, reflecting the ways in which public institutions carry meaning that extends well beyond their operational functions.
For residents of West Palm Beach and Palm Beach County, the airport represents not only a practical transportation hub but also a piece of local history with a defined and documented point of origin. That origin, in 1936, under the name Morrison Field, remains the starting point for understanding everything the airport has been and everything it may yet become.