With the onset of World War II, the Eglin Field military reservation was greatly expanded when the Choctawhatchee National Forest was turned over to the War Department by the U.S. Forestry Service on 18 October 1940, and a series of auxiliary airfields were constructed from January 1941 onward.

It was constructed in a similar manner to a fully equipped base with three 4,000-foot runways, a large parking ramp, at least one hangar and numerous support buildings.

It was possibly used by then-Lt Col Jimmy Doolittle in 1942 as one of several practice sites on the greater Eglin Field complex for the short takeoff runs needed for his B-25 bomber crews to conduct their carrier-launched raid on Japan.

In 1975, after the Fall of Saigon, the installation served as one of four South Vietnamese resettlement camps established in the United States as part of Operation New Arrivals, the largest humanitarian airlift in history.

Air Force personnel housed and processed more than 10,000 Southeast Asian refugees in a "Tent City."