New Sign Adorns Elk City Airport

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October 17, 2023

By Landry Brewer

Elk City’s airport just got a facelift.

Dean Codner, the Newcastle artist who touched up Elk City Museum Complex structures last spring, recently created the new sign at the city’s airport and placed a fresh coat of paint on the Korean War-era US Air Force fighter jet next to the sign at the airport’s southwest corner.

Codner created the new sign as a tribute to Chuck Yeager, the first pilot to fly faster than the speed of sound. According to the National Air and Space Museum, Yeager broke the sound barrier in a Bell X-1, the plane that Codner depicted in the sign.

Yeager did this the first time on October 14, 1947, when he flew the plane—named “Glamorous Glennis” in honor of his wife—700 miles an hour.

Yeager reached his fastest speed in the airplane on March 26, 1948, when he flew it 957 miles per hour.

The Glamorous Glennis was donated to the National Air and Space Museum in 1950.

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