On July 3, 1925, the Fort Worth city council approved a lease on 100 acres of property on Decatur Road for the city’s new municipal airport, built to replace Barron Field, the city’s first municipal airport and a World War I-era flying training field near Everman. After passage of the Air Mail Act (Kelly Act) in 1925, airlines began flying mail over Contract Air Mail routes, and Fort Worth, as headquarters of the 11th district of the U.S. Post Office Railway Mail Service, offered an ideal location to connect ground and air distribution. On May 12, 1926, National Air Transport Co., later United Airlines, flew the field’s first air mail flight to Chicago. On July 16, 1927, the airport was renamed Meacham Field in honor of former Mayor H. C. Meacham, and soon several airlines began offering passenger service on the Contract Air Mail routes. By 1931, the airport had expanded to 280 acres. On April 4, 1937, Meacham Field’s new Art Moderne terminal, the first air-conditioned passenger terminal in the U.S., and control tower were dedicated. During World War II, in April 1943, American Airlines received a contract to train U.S. Navy pilots there on the Douglas R4D (DC-3) transport, and in May 1943 the navy commissioned the airport as a naval auxiliary air facility and established a ferry service unit to coordinate cross-country fighter and torpedo bomber deliveries to the Pacific and seaplane ferrying services at nearby Lake Worth. When Fort Worth International Airport opened in April 1953, commercial airline operations moved there, and Meacham Field afterward developed into one of the world’s leading airports for general and corporate aviation, flight training, and aircraft repair.