Wolfeboro's Little Airport & Ralph M. Horn

[PaulH]

I've been travelling to Winnipesaukee every August for the past sixteen years. For most of that time, Lakes Region Airpark was the way we got there. Even now, three years after I last used the airport, it seems strange to get there any other way. To me, the Airpark was the heart and soul of the Lakes Region. Wolfeboro meant Airpark. The seaplanes tied up at the dock were evocative of the north woods. Coming over the dark ridges of trees to the narrow little runway, surrounded on three sides by clear water, it was obvious that I was a long way from Washington, DC, if not in another world entirely.

Over my sixteen years, I got a once-a-year snapshot of the Airpark, and watched its fortunes rise and fall. There was a golden period in the mid-1990s when there were lots of people there, even a Saturday hamburger cookout. Then, there was a bleak period of deterioration and no fuel available. In the late 1990s, there was a brilliant recovery, anfd the airport returned to health. This was short-lived, and the facility went into its final decline. At the end, I had to use my own stakes to tie the aircraft down and it required a long negotiation to get a local car rental place to transport us between the airpark and the Sandy Island dock. Laconia and, finally, Moultonboro were so much more convenient, had fuel, and offered a quicker trip to the island. I felt disloyal not to use Wolfeboro, but the airport was becoming almost impossible to use as a gateway to the region.

This summer, they started digging up the runway. Lots of little houses on the way, all built out of ticky-tacky and all looking just the same. All part of a general pattern of removing beauty and individuality from Wolfeboro. Then again, if people don't appreciate what they have, they deserve to lose it. One of the good things about using Moultonboro Airport is that I can come for a two week stay on the island without every having to spend a dime at, or even see, that town that threw away their beautiful airport.

Paul

[ApS]

Lots of Lakes Region pilots get misty about the airport and thinking of the supreme effort put forth by the Horn family to get it there.

Planes still "shoot" the runway, and it may be possible to land a plane there today-though it's
still uphill )

Here's a photo of the tiedown area in its "Happy Skies" days:



Atop the red and white pole at the extreme right is the airport's beacon. It appears on many charts of the Lake Region as "flashing green and white".

[jrc]

Originally Posted by Acres per Second

...Atop the red and white pole at the extreme right is the airport's beacon. It appears on many charts of the Lake Region as "flashing green and white".

Maybe they can convert that beacon into a cell phone tower and quell the arguements in Alton.

[ApS]

It was intended for floatplanes, but with this super-long gas line you could fill up your boat with 100 octane gasoline at the water's edge. (And some neighbors did). Town concerns resulted in having the pump removed.

The pump was replaced by a big gasoline tank in a 1-ton pickup's bed!

On the driver's seat was a clipboard where you would post the number of gallons you used and your address. You would—eventually—be sent a bill. (The Honor System until 1997, when the delivery system was again dramatically changed).

This re-photo, from the mid-60s, shows how crowded Winter Harbor could get on a sunny day!

(That's the truck's door to the left).