Redwood City was an important center for early aviation, and the site of Stanford Redwood City was once an airfield. In early 1916, Silas Christofferson, a young pilot and engineer, bought Michael Lynch’s flower field and built an airfield, engine manufacturing plant, and flying school. He designed stronger aircraft engines, more easily assembled aircraft bodies, and more comfortable cockpits, and Redwood City’s favorable winds and weather allowed year-round flying. Christofferson died there on October 31, 1916, while flight-testing a plane he was designing for the U.S. military, at age 26. The flying school continued to operate, and chief instructor Frank Bryant trained many of the first Chinese, Chinese-American, Korean, and Japanese pilots, as well as Helen Hodge, the first woman to receive a pilot’s license on the West Coast. Walter Varney, who later founded Continental and United Airline, learned to fly at the airfield and bought the property in 1919. He taught aerial acrobatics, operated an air taxi, and delivered local fresh flowers by air to West Coast customers before establishing Varney Air Lines in Boise, Idaho, in 1926. Redwood City also made a serious proposal to host the first long-haul airport on San Francisco Bay, promoting it with the slogan “Climate Best by Government Test,” but Mills Field in Millbrea was chosen instead as the site of what is now San Francisco International Airport. The Redwood City Airfield closed in 1939.