BATON ROUGE - Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport, the capital city's historic air field, turns 77 today.

Built in 1941 and later named the Harding Air Field, the site was used by the U.S. Army Air Forces Technical Service Command as a maintenance and supply base in World War II. During the war, hundreds of flyers received flight training in the city.

The site was renamed the Ryan Airport in 1954.

Today, the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport serves an MSA of over 830,000 people and a total catchment area of approximately 1.7 million in south Louisiana and southwest Mississippi.