Before There Was a Park in Mission Bay, There Was Peik Airport

By Debbie L. Sklar / Special to the OB Rag

Today, Mission Bay Park is one of San Diego’s most recognizable recreational destinations, filled with beaches, sailboats, paddleboards, bike paths and visitors enjoying the waterfront.

But before the bay became the sprawling aquatic park San Diegans know today, the shoreline was home to something unexpected: a small airport.

Known as Peik Airport, the airfield operated along the southwestern shore of Mission Bay during the mid-20th century. At the time, the area looked nothing like today’s landscaped parks and beaches. Much of Mission Bay was made up of tidal marshes, mud flats and undeveloped shoreline.

The airport’s story began with Arnold H. Peik, a pilot who arrived in San Diego in the 1930s. A 1967 San Diego Evening Tribune article by John McPeek (reprinted in PB newsletter below) recalled Peik’s arrival as a young barnstorming pilot flying a Stinson monoplane into San Diego before eventually establishing his flying operation near Mission Bay.

“It all began when a young barnstorming pilot in a battered Stinson monoplane flew into San Diego” in 1934, the article recalled.

The old newsletter from the Pacific Beach Historical Society (2017, found online) noted that by the 1940s, Peik’s airport had become a small but active aviation facility. The San Diego History Center’s City of the Dream, 1940–1970 notes that Peik operated the airport beginning in 1943 and that by 1946 it had a 2,600-foot oiled runway and three hangars.

The airport provided a place for private pilots to store aircraft, maintain planes and enjoy recreational flying during a period when aviation was rapidly growing in San Diego.

But Peik Airport’s future was tied to the changing vision for Mission Bay.

For decades, the bay had been viewed as an underdeveloped area of marshes and mud flats. After World War II, San Diego leaders began pursuing plans to transform Mission Bay into a major recreational destination. The project involved dredging and filling large portions of the area, creating new waterways, islands and parkland.

As redevelopment moved forward, the city acquired Peik Airport. In 1957, the airport closed as part of the development of Mission Bay Park. The city also purchased and closed another nearby small airport southwest of Peik’s field near Midway Drive.

The change was part of a larger shift in San Diego aviation. The city expanded facilities at other airports, including Montgomery Field, which developed from the former Gibbs Field on Kearny Mesa and became an important general aviation facility.

Today, visitors walking along Mission Bay’s shoreline would have little clue that airplanes once took off from the same general area where people now launch kayaks, sailboats and paddleboards.

The runways and hangars are gone, replaced by parks, roads and recreation areas. But hidden beneath the history of Mission Bay is a surprising aviation chapter — a time when small planes shared the shoreline before it became one of San Diego’s favorite outdoor destinations.

Sources:
San Diego History Center, City of the Dream, 1940–1970, Chapters 7 and 8.
City of San Diego, Mission Bay History.
John McPeek, “Freeway Travelers Fly Past Peik’s Mission Bay Airport,” San Diego Evening Tribune, Jan. 23, 1967.
FAA, 1950 map of Peik Auxiliary Field.
San Diego History Center Digital Collections, Howard Rozelle Aerial Collection, “Peik’s Airport – Aerial – 1945.”