The concept of residential airparks first gained traction after World War II, a time period when the United States had an incredible abundance of both airfields and pilots. In order to put countless deactivated military strips across the nation to good use and to accommodate a pilot population that had ballooned from fewer than 34,000 in 1939 to more than 400,000 by 1946, the Civil Aeronautics Administration proposed the construction of 6,000 residential airparks throughout the country, with initial focus placed on the Southeast. While that number was never fulfilled, the momentum created by the initial proposal paved the way for decades’ worth of interest and investment in what has become a large and active network of fly-in communities.
