Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, the first to fly non-stop from New York to Paris, made his thirty-three-and-a-half-hour solo flight on May 20-21, 1927, in the single-engine monoplane Spirit of St. Louis, an achievement accomplished without a radio and with only minimal navigational equipment. The Guggenheim Fund and the U.S. Department of Commerce then sponsored him on a nationwide air tour to promote commercial aviation and demonstrate the safety and punctuality of professional flying. On August 27, 1927, he took off from Fargo, North Dakota, for Sioux Falls, dropping fly-over messages at Aberdeen, Redfield, Huron, and Mitchell before landing at Renner Field precisely at noon to the cheers of more than 30,000 people. He expressed hope that this field, or one better situated, would be developed into a first-class airport for the city, and that hope was realized four months later when Dakota Airlines was founded at the site on December 27, 1927. In the mid-1920s, Sioux Falls aviator and former U.S. Army pilot Harold W. Tennant had begun offering flight instruction and air taxi service on a 118-acre field owned by George Renner a quarter mile southwest of here. Dakota Airlines became Sioux Falls's first full-scale flight facility there, and Nellie Willhite, South Dakota's first licensed aviatrix, received instruction and soloed at the field. Tennant and a companion were killed nearby in a crash while test-flying a new Kari-Keen monoplane on September 8, 1928. Dakota Airlines dissolved on February 2, 1931, and Renner Air Service was established. By then the airport had two large hangars facing west along the railroad tracks, a small hangar with an office at the north entrance, a Standard Oil gasoline pump with a 1,000-gallon tank, a wind sock, designated landing areas for year-round flying, open-cockpit biplanes for instruction, and a five-passenger Ryan monoplane for transport service. Air shows and airplane races were held there periodically until flight operations ended in January 1935.