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--- transportation:airports [2025/08/29 03:39] – [ORD - O'Hare - Chicago, IL USA] timb
+++ transportation:airports [2026/06/17 18:53] (current) – [Airports] timb
@@ Line 29: / Line 29: @@
 == Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields ==
-© 2002, © 2021 by Paul Freeman. Revised 5/18/21.
+Copyright 2002, Copyright 2021 by Paul Freeman. Revised 5/18/21.
-*** Dedicated in the memory of my father, Harris Freeman (1929-2010), who supported my interest in aviation ever since I was a little boy. ***
+Dedicated in the memory of my father, Harris Freeman (1929-2010), who supported my interest in aviation ever since I was a little boy.
-**“History & mystery combined.”**
+“History & mystery combined.”
 On the following pages, you will find information on vanished or abandoned airfields & their unusual histories.
@@ Line 277: / Line 277: @@
 © 2002, © 2023 by Paul Freeman. Revised 8/29/23.
-*** Dedicated in the memory of my father, Harris Freeman (1929-2010), who supported my interest in aviation ever since I was a little boy. ***
+Dedicated in the memory of my father, Harris Freeman (1929-2010), who supported my interest in aviation ever since I was a little boy.
 “History & mystery combined.”
@@ Line 458: / Line 458: @@
 https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/interactive/2025/best-airports-us-ranking/
+== Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields ==
+© 2002, © 2026 by Paul Freeman. Revised 6/13/26.
+*** Dedicated in the memory of my father, Harris Freeman (1929-2010), who supported my interest in aviation ever since I was a little boy. ***
+“History & mystery combined.”
+On the following pages, you will find information on vanished or abandoned airfields & their unusual histories.
+As a pilot, a particular interest of mine has always been the abandoned airfields that dot the landscape of much of this country.
+Both for their potential safety value to a pilot in an emergency, and also for their sometimes fascinating history, this particular topic has always held my curiosity.
+When I'm a passenger on commercial flights, I've always found myself looking out the window, constantly looking for airfields below.
+When I fly as a pilot myself, I've always tried to land at as many airports as possible,
+to learn a little about each one.
+https://airfields-freeman.com/
@@ Line 557: / Line 581: @@
 https://www.kgw.com/article/news/investigations/hillsboro-airport-safety-risks-runway/283-e17ed518-3fc9-4d10-af10-a3c4f5c9580e
+===== KCGX - Meigs Field - Chicago, IL US =====
+== Looking Back at the Overnight Destruction of Meigs Field ==
+Chicago’s mayor in 2003 dismantled a historic lakefront airport and paid a ‘pocket change’ fine.
+Meg Godlewski - Monday, March 30, 2026 at 04:52 PM ET
+It takes years to build an airport, at least 30 days to get permission from the FAA to legally shut it down—a situation that’s unlikely as the agency is in the business of protecting aviation—and just a few hours to destroy it. These are lessons learned on March 30,  2003, when the aviation world woke up to learn that Merrill C. Meigs Field (formerly KCGX) in Chicago had been destroyed overnight.
+It wasn’t an act of nature. It was done on order of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, who instructed heavy equipment operators to go to the airport under the cover of darkness and carve a series of X-shaped ditches across the 3,900-by-150-foot runway, rendering it useless.
+The airport was built shortly after World War II on Northerly Island, a human-made peninsula minutes from downtown Chicago. In 1952, the airport was named Meigs Field after Merrill C. Meigs, the publisher of the Chicago Herald and Examiner and an aviation enthusiast. The airport’s 75 acres were leased from the Chicago Parks District.
+The airport’s location made it popular with business travelers, medical flights, and recreational pilots. Aviation enthusiasts from outside the Chicago area were introduced to it as the default airport in no fewer than 12 versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator.
+Daley was not the first Chicago mayor who wanted to close the airport. In the 1980s  Jane Byrne suggested closing it and converting the land into a park. This raised a great outcry among local pilots, aviation advocacy groups, and businesses that appreciated the convenience of an airport so close to downtown.
+In addition, the FAA admonished the city that the airport had received agency grants, and each one carries an assurance that the facility remains open a set amount of time (usually 25 years) so that the grants can be amortized. The city had most recently accepted a grant in 1976, so the soonest the airport could legally close would have been 2001.
+https://www.flyingmag.com/looking-back-at-the-overnight-destruction-of-meigs-field/