The original Palo Alto Airport was located adjacent to Stanford Stadium, California, and was built in the late 1920s. Between 1934 and 1936, a new Palo Alto Airport was built at the airport’s current location in Santa Clara County, near the south end of San Francisco Bay on the western shore.

This delightful menu, showing a hungry plane fueling up in the Sky Café before a flight, is from May 1948. The cheapest items were 10c and the most expensive 75c.

The Palo Alto Airport (PAO) is still a single-runway airport and an important community asset, owned by the city of Palo Alto.

The paved runway measures 2,443 × 70 feet and there is a terminal building available to transient pilots and visitors. The Air Traffic Control Tower is operated by the Federal Aviation Administration.

The Airport’s property is approximately 102 acres and generally bounded by Embarcadero Road, Baylands Golf Links, the Bayland Nature Preserve, and the San Francisco Bay.

The airport  has a number of repair shops and is also home to a number of flying clubs (in order of establishment): Stanford Flying Club (est. 1930), West Valley Flying Club (est. 1973), Sundance Flying Club (est. 2006),] and the newest Advantage Aviation Flying Club.