Pima Air & Space Museum

The museum opened to the public on May 8, 1976, with 48 aircraft on display. Col. I.R. Perkin and the Air Force Association had founded it a decade earlier as the Tucson Air Museum Foundation of Pima County, and after ten years of work, they turned an empty plot into one of the world's largest privately funded aerospace collections. By 1992, the name added "Space" — the machines on display had outgrown atmosphere.

Today nearly 400 aircraft spread across 80 acres on a campus occupying 127 acres total. The collection spans aviation history: a Wright Flyer, World War II planes, an SR-71A Blackbird, an A-10 Warthog, an F-14 Tomcat, and a 787 Dreamliner Boeing donated in 2015 — the second 787 ever built, displayed in the colors of ANA. Six hangars shelter the climate-sensitive pieces. The main hangar holds the Blackbird, the Warthog, a United States Air Force Through the Years exhibit, and a mock-up of a control tower. The Arizona Aviation Hall of Fame has called this place home since 1991.

The museum sits adjacent to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Next door, the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group — the Boneyard — operates the largest aircraft storage and preservation facility in the world.

Donations keep arriving. In 2016, Orbis International gave their first DC-10 Flying Eye Hospital — the oldest flying DC-10 at the time and the second one ever built. NASA's retired SOFIA observatory aircraft came later, a 747 modified to carry an infrared telescope. In May 2025, a disassembled Martin Mars seaplane arrived by truck after landing at Lake Pleasant three months earlier.

The museum acquired 77 acres in January 2021 to build the Tucson Military Vehicle Museum, a separate facility for land vehicles including 50 donated by the Imperial War Museum. Within the grounds sits the 390th Memorial Museum, its hangar completed in 1987 to protect a B-17G on loan from the Air Force — physically connected, separately operated.