Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base

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Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base was an 1,362 acre air base and airfield that operated from 1941 to 2001 at Belton, Missouri straddling the border between Cass County, Missouri and Jackson County, Missouri.

The City of Kansas City built Grandview Airport (IATA code GVW) in 1941. In 1955 the city deeded the airport free of charge to the Air Force which named it Grandview Air Force Base. In 1957 it was renamed Richards-Gebaur in honor of Kansas City residents John Francisco Richards II (an airman killed in World War I) and Arthur William Gebaur Jr. who was killed in the Korean War. The Air Force deactivated the base in 1976 and the base was used for general aviation.

After a Federal Aviation Agency memo in the early 1960s declared that the city's Kansas City Downtown Airport was the most unsafe major airport in the country, the city considered relocating its main airport to the airport. However, they ended up relocating north of the city at Kansas City International Airport.

In 1985 the Air Force formally deeded the airport back to Kansas City as surplus property. The last military use of the airport ended in 1994 with the transfer of the 36th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron and the 77th and 78th Aerial Port Squadrons to Peterson Air Force Base.

The airport runway 18/36 had a 9,000 foot runway with a 1,000 foot over run on each end.

Between 1983 and 1997 the city of Kansas City lost $18 million on the airport. In 1998, the FAA approved a plan to close the airport. In 2001 the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision to close the airport in a suit brought by Friends of Richards-Gebaur Airport of Grandview, Missouri.

The former airport is now used as the Kansas City SmartPort for Kansas City Southern Railroad to ship cargo to Mexico.