Chico Air Museum

The Chico Air Muse­um col­lects, pre­serves, doc­u­ments and dis­plays air­craft, and avi­a­tion and space arti­facts. The museum’s pri­ma­ry pur­pose is to edu­cate and inspire peo­ple of all ages about avi­a­tion and the his­to­ry of flight.

The muse­um is locat­ed inside a WWII era hangar that was orig­i­nal­ly a part of the Chico Army Air­field. Inside, you can explore a num­ber of inter­est­ing arti­facts, pic­tures and his­toric dis­plays, exten­sive avi­a­tion research library, and more. Out­side is a sta­t­ic dis­play area with jet and pro­peller-dri­ven aircraft.

More About the Museum

The non-prof­it Chico Air Muse­um was found­ed in 2004 by a group of local res­i­dents who were con­cerned that the rich, local avi­a­tion his­to­ry was being lost to time. Founders includ­ed Vic Alvis­tur, Jim Bab­cock, Bri­an Baldridge, Norm Rosene, Gary Thomp­son, and Noël Wheel­er. In 2004 the muse­um accept­ed its first two air­craft dona­tions: a Lock­heed P‑2V Nep­tune Navy anti-sub­ma­rine air­craft and the largest pro­duc­tion biplane ever built, a Russ­ian Antonov AN‑2 Colt. In May 2005 the muse­um offi­cial­ly opened its doors to the pub­lic in a small WWII Army Air­field build­ing at the Chico Munic­i­pal Airport.

In 2015 the muse­um moved to a large WWII Army Air Corp hangar that was built and used dur­ing WWII. With gen­er­ous finan­cial sup­port from the com­mu­ni­ty and many hours of donat­ed time and work, the site was cleaned, refur­bished, and upgrad­ed to mod­ern oper­at­ing stan­dards. Today it hous­es 19 air­craft (with more being added all the time) and over a dozen per­ma­nent displays.

Below are the cur­rent air­crafts the muse­um has on dis­play, as of August 2022.

• Thor­pe T‑211 Sky Scooter
• Antonov AN‑2 Russ­ian Biplane
• Bell 47 Helicopter
• Cul­ver Cadet LCA
• Chance Vought A‑7 Cor­sair (Viet­nam War)
• Del­phin L‑29V Czecho­slo­va­kian jet trainer
• EAA Biplane
• Grum­man Guardian (one of only six in the world)
• Lock­heed P2-V7 Nep­tune ASW aircraft
• Lock­heed T‑33A Shoot­ing Star
• McDon­ald Douglas
• F‑15C Eagle
• North Amer­i­can F‑86 Sabre
• Piasec­ki H‑21 helicopter
• Pitts Mod­el 12 extreme aer­o­bat­ic airplane
• RAF 2000 GTX SE Gyrocopter
• Schred­er HP Sailplane
• SPAD XIII (WWI Biplane)
• Tay­lor Titch For­mu­la 1 Reno Racer
• Con­sol­i­dat­ed Vul­tee BT-13 Valiant (icon­ic train­er from WWII and Chico Army Airfield)