Results tagged “Fayfield” from York Town Square

This photograph shows the administration building of the original York (Pa.) Airport along Haines Road. It is now a private residence, although it looks vastly different. Background posts: Where was York County's earliest documented airstrip? and York Airport memories spawn even more recollections about old York-area airfields and It's a bird. It's a plane. It's cigars with wings dropped by York-based promoters.

Recent York Town Square posts have examined the Roosevelt Avenue airport in west York and the Valley Airways field in east York.

We've even looked at what the local student of aviation John F.M. Wolfe views as the earliest documented airstrip.

But what about the original York Airport, the one that many remember operating on the Kindig Farm along Haines Road? ...

Model builder Paul Schiding talks about the former York airport that was along Haines Road, as former airport flight instructor Jack Hespenheide, listens in this 2006 file photo. The model of the airport remains on display at the York County Heritage Trust's Agricultural and Industrial Museum. Notice the red-brick administration building, barely visible, in the background. Background posts: Museum exhibit brings back early days of high fliers and It's a bird. It's a plane. It's cigars with wings.

A model of York's first airport, started in 1930 on level land in the present-day Fayfield area near Misericordia Nursing Home, presents an intriguing exhibit at the Agricultural and Industrial Museum in York.

My eyes always go to the administration building, a low brick structure.

The building has fascinated me since I read about it and this early airport in John F. M. Wolfe's "Profile of Aviation, York County, Pennsylvania, 1925-1998."

The large hangar (see photo by clicking on background post above) was dismantled after the airport closed later in the 1930s.

But, Wolfe wrote, the administration building is now a private residence, located at 7th Avenue and Haines Road... .

Barnstormer Karl Ort and sales manager Ray Paris used the novelty of aviation to sell their company's cigars.

In the early days of flying, the York-based pair, tooling around in their DeHavilland plane, tossed cigars attached to parachutes to would-be customers on the ground.

This story with an enlarged photograph of Ort and Paris with their Manchester Cigar Co. DH6 is part of a transportation exhibit at the York County Heritage Trust's Agricultural and Industrial Museum. For additional details on the early years of York County aviation, see http://www.yorktownsquare.com/2006/11/post-1.html.

The exhibit tells the rest of the story... .