Chicago Midway opened in 1927 as Chicago Air Park. It sat on one square mile of land leased from the Board of Education, at 63rd Street and Cicero Avenue on the city's south side. It was soon renamed Chicago Municipal Airport. Airmail contracts and the city's central spot in America's growing transport network made it grow remarkably fast throughout the entire 1930s.
By the 1930s it claimed the title of the world's busiest airport, a rank it held through the 1940s and into the 1950s. In 1949 the field was renamed Midway to honor the Battle of Midway, a major World War Two naval victory. Its decline came with the jet age, because the tight one square mile site, boxed in tightly by streets and houses, could not fit longer runways.
Airlines shifted to the new O'Hare field, which passed Midway in traffic by 1962. Midway nearly emptied out, with almost no scheduled service by the mid 1960s. Deregulation revived it, first through Midway Airlines starting in 1979 and then through Southwest Airlines, which built one of its largest operations here. A single terminal opened in 2001, and Midway now handles more passengers annually than during its earlier golden age.