Old York Airport: ‘I never knew we had an airport on Roosevelt Ave.’
A World War II B-17 bomber sits at the York Airport in Thomasville in October 2001. Andy Rusnack, seen here, a World War II veteran, flew in a B-17 exactly like this one shortly before he was sent overseas in 1942. “It sure takes you back,” Rusnack said. Background posts: First York Airport’s administration building stands today and Just try to resist studying this memory-tugging photograph and U.S. 30 Drag-O-Way, Part III: ‘We would watch the dragsters on trailers head for Thomasville’.
A former York countian e-mailed after looking into a query from someone about an aircraft that wrecked near Winterstown or Red Lion some years ago.
“Didn’t find that, but ran across this link about the old York Airport,” he wrote. “I never knew we had an airport on Roosevelt Ave.”
I had written in a past York Town Square post – Museum exhibit brings back early days of high fliers:
The airport moved on to various sites: adjacent to the former York Mall, now the East York Wal-Mart (the former Valley Canvas building was part of that strip); its present site near Thomasville; to the west of Roosevelt Avenue in the vicinity of the Sylvania plant and back to its present site. (For a detailed history of York County airports, see John F.M. Wolfe’s “Profile of Aviation, York County, Pennsylvania, 1925-1988.” York, Pa.: Wolf Printing, 1998.)
Too see the link, which includes all kinds of fascinating maps and photos of the York Airport when it was along Roosevelt Avenue in a now built-up area, click here.
