Roosevelt Roads, Ceiba

Future U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, toured Puerto Rico in 1919, visiting Ceiba. When he returned to Washington, D.C., he expressed a liking for the terrain where the base now sits. This was during the World War I era, and the United States could benefit from an air field in Ceiba. While Puerto Rico is a sub nation, its territorial rights belong to the United States, which made it perfectly feasible, and ideal, for the American government to build an airplane base in Ceiba.

It took many years, however, for the United States Government to become convinced of the need for an air base to be constructed in Ceiba. It was not until Adolf Hitler and Nazi-led Germany began to invade other European countries, that the United States Government, led by then President Roosevelt, let the thought of a Naval air station in Ceiba being a necessity, cross their minds. But with warfare going on in the European and Pacific theatres, they saw an airbase in the Caribbean area as an unneccesary commodity, if at least only for the period being.

The base had been inaugurated, but scaled down to a maintenance status with a public works office in 1944; from that moment on and until 1957, the base went through many shifts, being opened seven times and closed eight times. Meanwhile, it continued on being a source of work for the citizens of Ceiba as well as for American military pilots and soldiers, because Ceiba's citizens gained jobs around town doing different things, such as working for the Puerto Rican Electric company's Ceiba branch, as a consequence of the airbase's operations, when it was operating.

In 1957, it was upgraded to Naval Station status. Fort Bundy was set there, but it crossed over to parts of Vieques, a fact which would later become important in the history of the base. An American military mission, the M3, was also set there. It was part of the "Naval Computer and Telecommunications Station, Puerto Rico Base Communication Department". "N3" had a fleet center, a technical control facility and a Tactical support communications department, among other things. The "M3" was designated to help Puerto Rico, the United States and other Caribbean and Latin American countries that were members of NATO to deal with drug trafficking, illegal immigration and other, much more complex subjects such as enemy airplanes during war, terrorism, etc.

For the next 47 years, the base would be utilized by military airplanes for landings and take-offs, as well as for other missions and control of the area's air-space. In 2001, a Hercules C-130 airplane carrying seven soldiers, including a Mexican-American woman, crashed in the town of Caguas, while en route from Roosevelt Roads to Rafael Hernandez Airport in Aguadilla. All seven soldiers perished, in the largest air tragedy ever to happen in Caguas. Shortly after the base was closed in 2004, a 71-year-old pilot decided to take a hobby flight in a one-passenger airplane from Fajardo Airport in nearby Fajardo, to the already abandoned Roosevelt Roads Naval Station. Before landing, however, his airplane stalled and crashed in a baseball field nearby. The man was able to escape without injury.