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Research dossier · Places & Architecture

Marquette Sawyer Regional Airport

Airport located in Marquette County, Michigan

Architectural plans, a scale model, maps and brass measuring instruments
Places and architectureInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ4568758 ↗
Source-derived summary

Marquette Sawyer Regional Airport (IATA: MQT, ICAO: KSAW, FAA LID: SAW) — previously named Sawyer International Airport — is a county-owned, public-use airport in Marquette County, Michigan, United States. Located 17 nautical miles (20 mi; 31 km) south of Marquette, it is included in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2021–2025, in which it is categorized as a nonhub primary commercial service and general aviation facility.

Although many U.S. airports use the same three-letter location identifier for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and International Air Transport Association (IATA), Marquette Sawyer Regional Airport is assigned SAW by the FAA and MQT by IATA (which assigned SAW to Sabiha Gökçen International Airport in Istanbul, Turkey).

Facilities and aircraft

Facilities

The airport is located near Gwinn on a portion of the former K. I. Sawyer Air Force Base, which closed in September 1995. The airport opened for passenger service in 1999. It replaced the former Marquette County Airport, which closed the same year. Although many U.S. airports use the same three-letter location identifier for the FAA and IATA, Marquette Sawyer Regional Airport is assigned SAW by the FAA and MQT by IATA (which assigned SAW to Sabiha Gökçen International Airport in Istanbul, Turkey).

In 2022, the airport distributed a survey asking for public input in a rebranding effort. Despite public effort to include local native and renowned aeronautical engineer Kelly Johnson's name in the rebranding, the Marquette County Board of Commissioners instead voted to rename the airport to Marquette Sawyer Regional Airport as part of the $20 million renovation and re-imaging initiatives.

Telkite Technology Park is adjacent to the airport, with 1,000 acres (400 ha) of land and 1,500,000 square feet (140,000 m2) of space in a Michigan Renaissance Zone, which exempts the tenant or owner from the majority of state and local taxes.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Marquette Sawyer Regional Airport” is airport located in Marquette County, Michigan. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Marquette, Sawyer and Regional, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA valuable geographic starting point for tracing changing names, boundaries, uses and administrative responsibility. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2021, 2025, 1995, 1999—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Marquette, Sawyer and Regional is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “airport located in Marquette County, Michigan” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4568758. The first chronological checks are 2021, 2025, 1995 and 1999.

Critical limits

Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.

Best used for
  • Historic place names
  • Jurisdictional context
  • Routes into maps and plans
Verify next

Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Marquette Sawyer Regional Airport”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Marquette Sawyer Regional Airport primary sources, Marquette Sawyer Regional Airport archive and Marquette research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Marquette Sawyer Regional Airport”?
  2. What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
  3. Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Marquette Sawyer Regional Airport” 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.