Even Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, close by here, tells you something essential about Austin. The facility occupies the former Bergstrom Air Force Base, established in 1942 to train pilots and support the massive mobilization of World War II. At the height of the Cold War, B-52 Stratofortresses — the nuclear-capable bombers that could reach the Soviet Union — operated from these runways as part of Strategic Air Command's continuous deterrence posture.
The base was named for Captain John August Earl Bergstrom, the first Austin resident killed in World War II, at Pearl Harbor in 1941. When the Cold War ended and military budgets contracted, Bergstrom was among the bases selected for closure in 1993. Austin — already planning to move its cramped Mueller Airport — seized the opportunity to convert the military base into a civilian airport, a project that took six years and opened in 1999.
The terminal is distinctly Austinian: live music performances happen daily at a stage in the main concourse, greeting arriving passengers with the sound that defines the city before they've reached baggage claim. As Austin has grown from 650,000 to over a million people in a single generation, the airport has expanded almost continuously, a concrete record of the migration reshaping Texas.