Stapleton International Airport retail and residential neighborhood. Stapleton opened on October 17, 1929 as Denver Municipal Airport. The development of the airport was spearheaded by Denver mayor Benjamin F. Stapleton and Improvements and Parks Department manager Charles Vail. Prior to the new airport's opening, Denver had been served by a number of smaller facilities, including an airstrip along Smith Road in Aurora (first used in 1911), an airfield at 26th Avenue and Oneida Street, Lowry Field near 38th Avenue and Dahlia Street, and Denver Union Airport at 46th Avenue east of Colorado Boulevard. In the late 1930s the airport facilities consisted of two
Stapleton International Airport Denver to El Paso, St. Louis and Tulsa. Frontier operated northbound and southbound from Denver to the other mountain states. Western connected Denver to Minneapolis and Edmonton. The April 1957 OAG shows 38 United, 12 Continental, seven Braniff, seven Frontier, seven Western, five TWA and one Central. The jet age arrived in May 1959 when Continental began operating Boeing 707 jetliners into Stapleton, initially under weight restrictions due to Stapleton's runway capacity. Runway 17/35 and a new terminal building opened in 1964. Although Stapleton officially adopted the "International" name in 1964, its first nonstop international service came in 1968, when