Pyote's bomber base became a 6,500-person desert outpost

Pyote's wartime airfield got its nickname from the ground itself. Workers uncovered rattlesnake dens during construction, and servicemen called the place Rattlesnake Bomber Base. The Army built it in 1942 on 2,745 acres of University of Texas land, with two 8,400-foot runways and five large hangars.

Construction began on September 5, and troops arrived within a month, before the base was finished. Crews trained in B-17s before switching to B-29s in July 1944. By that October, more than 6,500 people were stationed at the base, giving a small Ward County community a temporary population all its own.

After the war, the airfield became a storage depot. Its inventory reached 2,042 aircraft in 1948, including the Enola Gay. Radar work followed before the base closed in 1966. Pyote's desert outpost did not have just one wartime life: it trained crews, parked a vast air fleet, and watched the sky.