the Navy began lighter-than-air operations in the Caribbean in the fall of 1943, the 80th Seabees were brought in to build a station at Carlsen Field. To supplement the eight Army-owned buildings taken over by the Navy, the 80th Battalion built a large, steel blimp hangar, a mooring circle, paved runways, a helium-purification plant, and other operational appurtenances. The facility was formally disestablished on 1950, and today the former air and naval airship base has been turned into a dairy and agricultural area south of Chaguanas and is all but unrecognisable. Much of the former airfield area is owned by National Flour Mills (NFM) and the only remnants of the base are the name of the area in south Chaguanas, along with streets named "Edinburgh" and "Xerxes". In the later 20th century Chaguanas grew rapidly as a bazaar town. The construction of Lange Park in the early 1980s attracted a middle-class community moving south from Port of Spain and the East–West Corridor and north from San Fernando. Its central location made it attractive to southerners working in north Trinidad and northerners looking for more affordable homes. Over the years, there has been an increase in the number of Afro-Trinidadian persons joining the mostly Indo-Trinidadian community of Chaguanas, primarily through the construction of National Housing Authority (now the Housing Development Corporation) residential housing, such as Edinburgh 500. Orchard Gardens was constructed as an upper middle class community, and Lange Park (which originally and continues to have a number of civil servants) gradually gentrified. Also, despite Couva's historical legacy within the Caroni County, as Chaguanas has evolved and expanded significantly to become the de facto administrative and commercial capital of Central Trinidad, Couva's character has now changed to become a magnet for industrialisation, sports, health, education, commercial, aviation and residential activities. In October 1990 Chaguanas was elevated to the status of borough under the provisions of the Municipal Corporations Act No. 21 of 1990. Geography Chaguanas is low-lying and is just upstream from the Caroni Swamp. The Caparo River runs through the town. The Chaguanas Main Road runs East to West from Felicity to Longdenville. The Southern Main Road (SMR) from Busy Corner (part of which includes the Chaguanas Main Road from Busy Corner to Montrose Junction) runs south to San Fernando. The North-South Highways begins and ends at the flyover in Chaguanas, just east of the SMR West of the SMR,