Los Angeles, CA
Opened 1928 as Mines Field. During WWII, Douglas Aircraft built DC-3s and DC-4s here. Renamed Los Angeles International 1949. The 1961 Theme Building — a Googie-architecture flying saucer on parabolic arches by Pereira & Luckman — became one of LA's most recognizable structures. Hub to American, Delta, and United.
1 Rocket Road — where every Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Crew Dragon, and Starlink satellite is designed and built. Mission Control sits across the parking lot from the production floor. The full-scale Falcon 9 booster outside the front entrance is a real flown rocket. Public tours suspended; the lobby cafe is occasionally accessible. KHHR airport is across the street — pilots flying in can see the Dragon test stand from the GA ramp.
The field you're landing at carries one of the great American lives. Louis Zamperini — the "Torrance Tornado" — set a national high-school mile record here, ran the 5,000m at the 1936 Berlin Olympics (closing with a 56-second final lap that caught Hitler's eye), and roomed with Jesse Owens. Then came the war: a B-24 bombardier, he went down in the Pacific in 1943, survived 47 days adrift on a raft in shark waters, and endured two years of brutal Japanese POW camps — the story Laura Hillenbrand told in Unbroken. Torrance renamed its airport Zamperini Field in his honor on December 7, 1946. The Western Museum of Flight sits right on the field, and a David Flores mural of Zamperini is part of the town's murals. He carried the Olympic torch past the very prison where he'd been held.
Originally HOLLYWOODLAND — built 1923 as a real-estate billboard for an Beachwood Canyon housing development. The "LAND" portion was removed in 1949 and the sign restored in 1978. Each letter is 45 feet tall. The sign sits at 1,578ft elevation on Mount Lee in the Hollywood Hills. The white letters are 45ft tall and read clearly from any aerial vantage with a southern exposure to the hill.
Tucked under the Verdugo Hills at the east end of the San Fernando Valley, Burbank calls itself the Media Capital of the World — and earns it. Warner Bros. built its 62-acre lot here in 1926 (still 36 sound stages, including one with a two-million-gallon water tank); Walt Disney moved his studio to Buena Vista Street in 1939 on the success of Snow White; NBC's "beautiful downtown Burbank" became a national punchline on Laugh-In. The three sit clustered in the Media District along the LA River. There's an aviation thread too: the airport you fly into was the home of Lockheed's Skunk Works — the U-2 that found the missiles in Cuba was built feet from the runway, before the operation moved up to Palmdale. Comedy, cartoons, blockbusters, and spy planes, all in one valley town.