Airport Identifiers

There are far too many tiny little airstrips to give them all 3 alpha characters, therefore they get alphanumeric designations. Usually the letter corresponds with the state it is in. On alpha designated airports usually it is associated with the town it is in/near (as opposed to the name of the airport)
Is there a method to that madness? French Valley in CA is F70(f for French?) and Big Bear City is L35(l for the lake there?). I've always wondered where those came from.

Edit: there are at least 6-7 airports in Southern California with an L to start the identifier. Strange
 
I've always wondered how they came up with those identifiers...the airport i took my first flight at 16 years ago was W11 (since has changed to LUM) but I just assumed the W was for Wisconsin. But then there's a field in eastern MN,that is 21D that has no reference to MN so who knows


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Some people just don't consider how it will play.

Dan Rather's alma mater in Texas used to be called Sam Houston Institute of Technology. Took them years to change it.
 
Referring to post 8, I'm wondering if "L" was for Los Angeles Center?

You might be onto something. There are quite a few airports in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois that either start or end with C (Lancaster, WI 73C, Cassville, WI- C74, Brodhead, WI- C37, and Poplar Grove, IL - C77 to name a few), and they would be in Chicago Center's "district". Then again there are plenty of airports that do not fit this pattern so who knows.
 
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