March 22, 1941

Grider Army Air Field opened. Named posthumously in honor of World War I flying ace John McGavock Grider of Osceola (Mississippi County), Grider Field was a World War II Army Air Corps training facility located in Jefferson County. Today, the field survives as southeast Arkansas’s first modern municipal airport, encompassing 850 acres. It is located nearly six miles southeast of Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), off Highway 65 South and north of U.S. Highway 425.