Flashback: Ben Audette, the Showman Who Put Borrego Valley Airport on the Map

From alfalfa fields to airport lights and the 1961 Aero-Rama, one man's ambitious vision for Borrego Springs lives on in the Borrego Sun Files.

In 1961, about ten years after he first drove into Borrego Springs in the early 1950s, Ben J. Audette sat down and typed a four-page letter to his neighbors. He called it “So That You May Know.” The letter is now in the Borrego Sun Files, and it tells the story of a man who bet big on the valley.

Audette was a manufacturer in the auto accessory business. He wrote that he wandered into Borrego on his way back from a fiesta south of the border, after a gas station in El Centro handed him literature about Hoberg’s. He meant to stay one night and stayed a week. He left as the owner of the old Beatty Ranch, the original homesite of “Doc” Beatty.

The Ben Audette's Luau and Spa in 1966. Featuring continental cuisine and gourmet delights during the summer months where you can enjoy the facilities of the spa, on the fringes of Borrego Airport. From the Borrego Sun online edition, 2015

Farming did not go as promised. Audette wrote that he spent two and a half years and $37,000 before he got his first alfalfa crop. He added that “we did produce the finest alfalfa in Borrego.” On the ranch he built the Molino Verde motel units, and next to the county airport he opened The Luau, a Polynesian restaurant. On opening day, he wrote, the power wasn’t on at five o’clock, but they were serving by eight.

The airport became his cause. He leased it from San Diego County and pushed to get the strip sealed. He paid for a unicom radio and covered the power bill for a beacon. Later he agreed to pay to keep new landing lights on from sundown to sunrise, 365 days a year. He wrote that those lights helped two planes land safely.

His biggest show came in April 1961. The official program for the First Annual Borrego Springs Aero-Rama called him “pilot, businessman, showman, dreamer” and the originator of the event, a roaring ’20s air circus at the Borrego Valley Airport. The show’s news release reported a crowd of over 16,000, even though a freak dust storm stopped the Sunday parachute jumps. In his letter Audette wrote that traffic was so heavy it took 45 minutes to get from the schoolhouse to the airport.

The letter isn’t all good news. Audette wrote that he had “received no recognition” for his efforts, and that he had even been ridiculed. He ended it with a coupon asking residents whether they wanted air service to San Diego and El Centro.

A later story draft by Lois von Voigtlander, also in the Sun Files, says Audette built the Luau Spa in 1964 and expanded the airport. It calls him “a visionary and planner.” The Beatty windmill, she wrote, was still turning beside the pool at Molino Verde.

You can read Audette’s full letter, the 1961 Aero-Rama program and the news release in the Collections at the Borrego Sun Archive. (coming soon)

From the Borrego Sun Files, preserved by Ram Media Foundation.

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