Muroc, now Edwards,
was and is flight-testing haven

DRY LAKES

Rogers Dry Lake and Rosamond Dry Lake provide expansive emergency landing fields for experimental aircraft and played pivotal roles in the history of the base. Over a half century, the two dry lake beds have saved billions of dollars worth of aircraft and numerous lives.

Although military presence began here in 1933, Edwards history traces back to 1910, when Clifford Corum, his wife Effie and a brother, Ralph, established a homestead on what is now the base.

They built a general store and post office and when their request to name the post office Corum was refused, because there was another mail facility with that name in California, they reversed the letters and called the fledgling community Muroc. That name identified the area for 40 years, until the name of Muroc Army Air Corps Base was changed to Edwards Air Force Base Jan. 27, 1950, in honor of Capt. Glen Edwards, who was the pilot when a Northrop YB-49 Flying Wing crashed, killing him and four other crew members June 5, 1948.

Back in 1933, a small group from March Field laid out the first of several temporary bombing and gunnery ranges at Muroc.

By 1937, the Army Air Corps was conducting bombing and gunnery maneuvers at Muroc, and a tent camp was staked out on the eastern edge of Rogers Dry Lake.

During World War II, the base played a role in training fighter and bomber crews. Less than a year after the surprise attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor, a team from the Materiel Center at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, arrived at Muroc and evaluated it as a potential site for a test program that would rival the Manhattan Project's development of the atomic bomb in terms of secrecy.

Three primary factors were considered in using Muroc for the secret test of a new kind of aircraft propulsion:

• Proximity to a railroad line.
• Isolation from prying eyes.
• Suitable landing field.

A hastily constructed site on the north end of Rogers Dry Lake was built for the ultra-secret project.

On Oct. 1, 1942, with two GE Model I-A jet engines for power, Bell test pilot Bob Stanley flew the aircraft for the first time, and the jet age was under way in the United States.

A little more than five years after the first jet flight, then Capt. Charles E. Yeager piloted the Bell X-1 to a speed of Mach 1.06. It was the first time anyone flew faster than the speed of sound.

In the late 1940s, the Air Force began a master plan for building a center specifically dedicated to flight testing.

During the 1950s, more than $120 million was spent on construction and development of the main base.

To prevent residential or commercial encroachment, the base acquired additional land from the Bureau of Land Management and private owners, including Pancho Barnes, the legendary operator of the Happy Bottom Riding Club ranch and airstrip.

On June 25, 1951, the Air Force Flight Test Center was officially activated at Edwards AFB, just four months after the Air Force Test Pilot School was transferred to Edwards from Wright-Patterson AFB.

On Jan. 1, 1979, Hill and Wendover ranges, and part of the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, were consolidated into the Utah Test and Training Range and placed under the management of the AFFTC.

In addition to being the location for the nation's first jet- and rocket-powered flights, Edwards is where flyers and aircraft first exceeded all the Mach numbers up to 6 and where they first flew above 100,000, 200,000 and 300,000 feet.

The famed North American X-15 rocket aircraft set altitude and speed marks of 354,200 feet and 4,520 mph - numbers that still stand for winged aircraft.

Edwards is the location where the lifting body research flights were conducted, paving the way for development of the space shuttle.

The first shuttle landings from space began in April 1981.