Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields

My aviation website pick of the week from Episode 50 of the Airplane Geeks podcast:

My pick is Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields, a website with descriptions and images of 1,428 airfields in all 50 U.S. states.

The author is Paul Freeman, a pilot who says he has always been interested in the abandoned airfields that are all over the country. These airfields can sometimes be critical to a pilot in an emergency, and sometimes they just have a fascinating history.

To explore the site a bit, I pretty much randomly chose Jonnycake Airport in western CT. I found t was built between 1957-60, initially with a 2,400' unpaved runway, but later with a 2,800' paved runway. There are sectional chart images, and recollections from a pilot who trained there in 1960. Other photos show private planes at the airport in the early days and aerial photos of the airport.

The airport closed in 2004 after a dispute between the airport owners and the owner of the property, who no longer wanted an airport on his property. The pilots argued about the economic benefits to the region, and the property owner responded by saying in the past 50 years that only amounted to two nearby restaurants that were popular with visiting pilots.The town made noises about grabbing the land by eminent domain, the FAA made noises about buying the airport, and so it remains.  It's fascinating local history (in a lot more detail than I just related), but imagine that repeated for over 1,400 airports and you've got an impressive collection of aviation history here.

So, have a look at this site and you'll almost certainly find at least one abandoned airfield near you. Take the opportunity to learn a little local aviation history!