On 3 December 1918, "Fairfax" arrived in the Azores to meet and escort to Brest, the transport "George Washington" carrying President Woodrow Wilson to the Peace Conference. She sailed for home 21 December, reaching Norfolk, Virginia 8 January 1919. Her post war operations along the east coast and in the Caribbean were broken in May 1919, when she sailed to the Azores to take up station as an observer of the historic first aerial crossing of the Atlantic made by Navy seaplanes. On 19 June 1922, she was decommissioned at Philadelphia, and placed in reserve.