Mason City Municipal Airport History

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“I have often said that the lure of flying is the lure of beauty.” - Amelia Earhart. The airport of Mason City is located on the north side of highway 18.
The Mason City Municipal airport has lots of history. Building it, how everything changed, commercial flight itself, and it’s got some extra cool stuff hidden throughout its time.
How the airport came to be established was quite a roller coaster. First, an inventor Floyd Barlow of Clear Lake made the first Cerro Gordo county resident round-trip flight from CL to MC in 1913. Then, according to the Mason City Airport Commission, later in 1926 a group of men brought the idea of building an airport to Commerce. The interest rate of building it was up and down. It was built on the south side of highway 18 in August of 1927. It was relocated to the north side of highway 18 in 1933.
The difference between the airport when it was first built is not drastic, but many things have upgraded. Fly.mcw.com said when the …show more content…

Some widely known about, some not so much. One that’s probably most known about the airport is that Buddy Holly and the Crickets took off from there before they crashed. With pilot Roger Peterson, the plane crashed in field north Clear Lake(flymcw.com). One less popular one is that the first official flight in Mason City was in 1911 as stated by iagenweb.org. June 25-26, 2015 was the first airshow held at our airport since 1996. The airshow shows off different WW planes, with a firework show and interactives according to mcwairshow.com. Did you know that not one but two aviation role models have come to the airport? Charles Lindberg came to the dedication ceremony of the new airport in 1927. Amelia Earhart also came to the building in 1933 to speak about her solo across the Atlantic. My personal favorite, there was a time capsule buried in 1996 at the site of the airport that will be dug up in

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