Before this land on Hartford Avenue was an airport, it was a farm. In the 1940s, the farm belonged to the John and Margaret Byrne family.
From 1940 to 1949, John and Margaret Byrne and family operated a small dairy farm on Hartford Avenue. The barn was on the Mendon side of the road, while the house and most of the fields were on the Hopedale side. The three pictures at the top of this page are from those days. In 1949, they moved to a larger farm in Littleton, and the Hopedale place was sold, first to Varney Brothers and in 1952, to Draper Corporation. Draper then built the airport on the site, and it opened in January 1953.