Out of the cornflower blue skies over Westcliffe winged beauties will emerge.

A sailplane from the Air Force Academy. T-6 Texan. Beechcraft T-34 Mentor. Falcon 900. Van’s Aircraft RV-4.

All of the above have landed at the SilverWest AirFest in the Wet Mountain Valley, about an hour and a half southwest of Colorado Springs, over the past two decades of the fly-in show. This year’s free event is Saturday at the SilverWest Airport.

Planes have long captured the imagination of many a human. Maybe it’s still the awe and wonder of flight. Maybe it’s what the big birds have contributed to our history. Probably it’s a little bit of a lot of things.

Bryan Anderson, chairman of the SilverWest Airport board, thinks part of the event’s allure is the ability to see the planes up close.

“People see them fly over or in a commercial setting,” he said. “You see it through a window at the airport, and you go down the jetway and get on, but you never get to see the plane from outside.”

Another big focus of the small, hometown fly-in is introducing young people to the power of aviation: “To expose them to something they might not get to see routinely and potential careers in aviation,” Anderson said.

The event began more than two decades ago as a free pancake breakfast, intended to lure people out to see the small airport, and has grown into a…