Qualla: From Wartime Runways to Racing Legends

From Wartime Runways to Racing Legends: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Steve McQueen downshifted into a hairpin that, twelve years earlier, had been a taxiway where Navy pilots practiced touch-and-go landings. The year was 1962, and the old Naval Outlying Landing Field at Cotati had reinvented itself in the most unlikely way imaginable. Where wartime mechanics once calibrated machine guns and topped off fuel tanks, sports cars now screamed through turns laid out on the same asphalt the federal government had poured to win a war. Cotati's airfield lived two distinct lives in the span of three decades, and both of them were loud.

From Wartime Runways to Racing Legends: Flight Context

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Coordinates: 38.35°N, 122.72°W. The former airfield site sits in the flatlands east of Cotati, between Highway 101 and the Petaluma River corridor. From the air at 2,000-3,000 feet AGL, the commercial development that replaced the runways is visible as a grid pattern distinct from the surrounding agricultural land. Look for the intersection of Old Redwood Highway and East Cotati Avenue as a reference. Nearest airports: KDVO (Gnoss Field, Novato, 15 nm south), KSTS (Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport, 10 nm north). Clear weather typical in summer; winter fog and rain common in the Petaluma Gap wind corridor.

From Wartime Runways to Racing Legends: The Field That Kept Flooding

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Cotati's airfield had a problem that no amount of engineering could fully solve: water. The site's poor drainage caused periodic flooding that muddied runways and grounded operations. The Navy invested more heavily in nearby NALF Santa Rosa, where the terrain cooperated. Cotati s...

From Wartime Runways to Racing Legends: The Checkered Flag Years

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For more than a decade, the abandoned airfield was just another piece of surplus military real estate. Then, in 1957, someone looked at those two crossing runways and saw not a defunct naval facility but a ready-made racing circuit. The wide taxiways and broad apron became the bo...

From Wartime Runways to Racing Legends: Buried Beneath the Ordinary

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

After 1972, the racing stopped too. Commercial development crept across the old airfield, and today the runways and buildings that once served two such different purposes are almost entirely obscured. Shopping centers, parking lots, and subdivisions cover the ground where Navy pl...