The airfield was established on 1 January 1943 as a United States Army Air Forces training airfield, being under the command of the 3037th Army Air Force Base Unit, AAF Western Flying Training Command.

The site was chosen due to the availability of water and the adjacent location of the Yuma Gunnery Range.

The target butt range was originally planned for construction at the Advanced Single Engine School in Yuma AAF Arizona; however, the decision was made to conduct all gunnery training and related functions at Dateland.

According to the INPR Supplement, the target butt and double skeet ranges first appear on a January 1943 map of the site.

However, the site was withdrawn from surplus on August 27, 1946, designated as a Class III auxiliary installation, and assigned as a sub-base of Williams Army Airfield in Chandler, Arizona.

In 1957 the hangar and the other flight line buildings mysteriously burned down, and the Air Force sent in an investigation team to do an inventory on the B-25 parts and found none.

The developers touted Dateland as "the largest fly-in community in the USA", with a total of 427 lots having taxiway connections to the airfield, and a concrete ramp area big enough to park 300 planes.

The only building remaining is a sand-filled concrete bunker previously used to sight the machine guns of the B-25 Mitchell bombers.