Mather Air Force Base
closed United States Air Force Base
Mather Air Force Base (Mather AFB) was a United States Air Force Base, which was closed in 1993 pursuant to a post-Cold War BRAC decision. It was located 12 miles (19 km) east of Sacramento, on the south side of U.S. Route 50 in Sacramento County, California. Mather Field was one of 32 Air Service training camps established after the United States entry into World War I in April 1917.
The Mather AFB land has various post-military uses including Sacramento Mather Airport, established in 1995. Some of the land was included in the City of Rancho Cordova, when it was incorporated in 2003. Mather Field also now serves as home of the 149th Intelligence Squadron of the 195th Wing, Air National Guard.
History
Mather Air Force Base was named after Second Lieutenant Carl Spencer Mather, a 25-year-old army pilot killed in a mid-air collision while training at Ellington Field, Texas, on 30 January 1918. Mather learned to fly in 1914 at the Curtiss Flying School in Hammondsport, New York, and became an instructor there at the age of 20. He enlisted as an aviation cadet in August 1917 and as a licensed pilot was commissioned with part of his class as a second lieutenant on 20 January 1918. He continued training to earn a Reserve Military Aviator rating and promotion to first lieutenant but was killed ten days later.
The public source identifies “Mather Air Force Base” as closed United States Air Force Base. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mather, Force and Base.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6786927. Authority coordinates are 38.554, -121.297. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1993, 1917, 1995 and 2003.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mather Air Force Base” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.