Those of you who have been following along for awhile know that one of the items on my travel bucket list is to visit all 3,143 counties in the United States. Now you can certainly argue that that is a silly goal to have, and I wouldn’t argue with you, but just know that there are many folks who are like-minded. There’s even an official organization (of course there is!) called the “Extra Miler’s Club“, whose motto is “the shortest distance between two points is no fun!”
My visited counties map
As part of documenting my list of counties visited (currently at 1410 as of the writing of this post), I had trouble figuring out which county the Dallas/Fort-Worth airport (DFW) was in. Or rather, it’s actually in TWO counties (Dallas and Tarrant)
DFW Airport Runway Map
Here’s a satellite picture of the DFW Airport runway map
DFW airport runway map from Wikimedia with the Dallas / Tarrant county line marked
As you can see, the terminal building is completely in Tarrant County, but some of the runways on the east side of the airport are in neighboring Dallas County.
- Terminal A: American Airlines
- Terminal B: American Eagle
- Terminal C: American Airlines
- Terminal D: AeroMexico, American Airlines, American Eagle, Avianca, British Airways, Cayman Airways, Emirates, Etihad, KLM, Korean Air, Lufthansa, QANTAS, Qatar Airways, Sun Country Airlines, VivaAerobus
- Terminal E: Air Canada, Alaska Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, JetBlue, Spirit Airlines, United Airlines, US Airways, WestJet
When I flew through Dallas on my way from Cincinnati to Utah, I flew on American Eagle into Terminal B and then out of Terminal C. Flying in, I was a bit disoriented and couldn’t figure out which runway I came in on, but on the way out, we flew out of the west runways and so I don’t think I can claim Dallas County… yet!
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While I understand that airports consume very large tracts of land I never understood why any reasonable airport authority would site an airport within two counties or cities. Washington Dulles is located in Fairfax and Loudoun counties. I would think that this complicates issues, such as supplemental county police, fire, and other protection. Also, if you need to sue the airport authority, where at? How would you define the airport’s principal place of business? What about where the circumstance arose or if it occurred within both counties? (their may be additional subject matter and personal jurisdiction authority under state law). In regards to IAD, WMATA voted for an above ground metro station in a parking garage and I can’t help but to wonder how much Loundon County influenced that decision. Fairfax county has received more economic benefit from IAD and I would assume that they might be willing to pay more for the underground station vs Loudoun County (the station is in Loudoun County).
Sorry for my somewhat unrelated rant, but I just don’t get why anyone would put airports in two or more jurisdictions!
Yeah that’s a tricky thing – I’m sure it has to do with land access. I know that the city of Broomfield, Colorado (suburb of Denver) got sick of its city being in 4 or 5 different counties and so they applied to be their own county.
The reason DFW is located in two counties is that both Fort Worth and Dallas wanted their own airports, but the FAA wouldn’t approve two separate airports. Neither city could would agree on a location in the other city, so the Federal Government said that if they didn’t choose, the government would do it for them.
So, land was selected that was in both cities 🙂 – Tarrant County is Fort Worth, and Dallas county is, well…
Atlanta also has a runway in another county, and as mentioned above, so does Washington Dulles. I wonder how many other airports straddle county lines.
I just checked on a couple, and Chicago O’hare also hits two counties.
I live next to DFW airport. If you traveled in or out of the C terminal you HAD to actually touch Dallas county as all arriving/departing C terminal flights travel along a taxi way that is the actually THE county line. Once off this taxiway a plane may depart from the east runways which are all in Dallas County or travel across one of the 2 taxiway bridges over International Parkway – which is the highway that runs north and south through the entire airport – and then depart off one of the west runways which are all in Tarrant County. So mark yourself down for both counties. FYI all terminal buildings are in the City of Grapevine, Car rental is in Dallas County. Grapevine gets a large amount of sales tax revenue off the airport. A cash cow that the city by law directs to Tourism and development only!
Thanks for the clarification!
Chuck mentioned this, but if you picked up a rental car, you did go into Dallas County. The rental car building itself is in Tarrant County, but the only road in and out of it on the east side of the building is (just barely) in Dallas County.