Evergreen maintained a large aircraft maintenance and storage facility at the Pinal Air Park in Marana, Arizona, which the company acquired from the CIA’s “Pacific Corp.”
The airline, established by Delford Smith (founder and owner), began operations in 1960 as Evergreen Helicopters. It acquired the operating certificate of Johnson Flying Service and merged it with Intermountain Airways (a CIA "
Pacific Corp." operator) to form Evergreen International Airlines in 1975. The holding company, Evergreen International Aviation, formed in 1979, wholly owned the airline. It also owned and operated the not-for-profit Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum, home of Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose and numerous other historical aircraft. An Evergreen Boeing 747 (N473EV) starred in the action film “Die Hard 2” with Bruce Willis. Additionally, Evergreen Boeing 727’s have been featured in numerous films including the Malpaso/Warner Bros. “The Rookie” with Clint Eastwood and Charlie Sheen, and the Tri-Star “Donnie Brasco” with Al Pacino and Johnny Depp. An acquisition from the CIA fleet of Intermountain Airways - (a Boeing B-17 bomber) starred in the James Bond film “Thunderball” with Sean Connery. The company was also scheduled to operate the SOFIA Boeing 747SP aircraft for NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) for NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA
The airline had a modified Boeing 747-100 aircraft for aerial firefighting, receiving final certification from the FAA in October 2006. Compared to existing large water bombers and air tankers, the Evergreen 'Supertanker' will offer at least seven times more fire retardant capacity. In December, 2010, Israel hired Evergreen's fire-fighting aircraft to fight the devastating Mount Carmel forest fire in northern Israel, just south of Haifa.
