Abandoned and Little-Known Airfields website

[dholly 718]

http://www.airfields-freeman.com/

 

A Labor of Love: How One Website is Keeping the History of Yesterday's Airfields Alive

 

Monday, April 01, 2013

By Dan Pimentel,
Airplanista Blog Editor

In this grand community of aviators I call our aviation family, the vast majority of pilots do something on a volunteer basis to help GA thrive because we are all in this together. And while it might seem overused or even cliche to say we are working to keep the dream alive for future generations, that is really the foundation of all this philanthropy.

We Airplanistas serve GA in all sorts of ways, from the tiniest of acts sprucing up the airport at the edge of town, to giving financial support to important groups like AOPA and EAA to fund their missions. But while all of this generosity and sweat equity is meant to shore up the future of aviation, one private pilot based in Ashburn, VA has been quietly choosing to cherish the past by keeping the memory of long-closed airfields alive.

Paul Freeman is the founder of the Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields website, a treasure chest of historical information contains descriptions and images of 1,636 forgotten airfields in all 50 states. The site has been on the web since 1999 and from April, 2002 until February of 2013, it has had 1,705,100 visitors. I have been one of those visitors, and can attest that this site is somewhat addictive if you are into aviation history.

In his day job, Freeman works for ITT Exelis on the national rollout of ADS-B, the next-generation air traffic control system. When not flying rented Diamond Eclipses from Leesburg VA or spending time with his family, it's a sure bet you will find him scouring the Internet for tiny bits of trivial information that might help connect the dots on exactly where an old abandoned airfield was located, and what it might have been like in its heyday:

 

Freeman got the idea for his Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields website when technology finally caught up to his own curiosity. "In the late 1990s, I realized that the availability of aerial photos over the web gave me the ability to examine what remained at the locations of abandoned airfields sometimes depicted on aeronautical charts," he said. "I typically look through my archival material, and do Google searches to accumulate information for the starting point for a new write-up. Once it is posted, the write-up typically 'snowballs' as readers send in more material."
 

 

An August 1964 photo by Jim Allen of the T-Bird Airpark
maintenance hangar, with a variety of general aviation aircraft.

 

One of those "write-ups" was for Willamette Airpark / T-Bird Airport, a long-lost airfield in Eugene, OR. I discovered this old field on Freeman's site, and sure enough, when I returned to the location just 2NM from my home, you can still see the remnants of Runway 12/30. Here's some excerpts from Freeman and his collaborators after doing some sleuthing on this field:

&

quot;The earliest reference to this general aviation field was in the 1947 Oregon Airport Directory. It described Willamette as being managed by a Robert Bevans, who operated Bevan’s Flying Service from the field. The runway configuration consisted of a 2,500' northwest/southeast gravel strip & a 1,900' north/south sod strip. Willamette Airpark gained a paved runway at some point between 1953-59, but the runway length at Willamette had been reduced by 400' within the next year, according to the 1960 Jeppesen Airway Manual. Reader Jay Flitton recalled, “Between 1962-1964 Willamette Airpark went by the name 'T-Bird' Airport. My dad, while going to graduate school at the University of Oregon, flew out of 'T-Bird' a lot. My mom started her private pilot lessons there. That is where I had my first airplane ride in a Cherokee 140. T-Bird had a beautiful log terminal building with a giant picture window overlooking the airport. The whole terminal looked more like a ski lodge or maybe something that should be in Yellowstone National Park. It was a beautiful little airport with a lot of activity. Too bad it is gone.†And reader John Tucker recalled, “I learned to fly at T-Bird in the 1960s. It was a wonderful place for a young boy to learn to fly. I was offered a job mowing the grass around the airport. Then I progressed to fuel and line boy. Of course I traded every hour against flying time. They had a couple of Champs, one N81967, two Piper Colts, a Cherokee 140 & 180, a Champion 7402B, a Shinn, and a few others."

[EDMO 1078]

Extremely interesting report Doug - I quickly thought of 3 airports that I used to fly from, and they are no longer there - wonder how many more are gone, but the memories still linger.   Lots of small strips were built during WW2, and a lot of them are probably gone now.

ED in MO

Edited 2 Apr 2013 by Ed In Missouri