Woolsey Memorial Airport, 13591 E. Woolsey Lake Road, Northport MI

While in Northport this summer, we came upon this unique building and stopped to take a look.

The fieldstone terminal is part of the Woolsey Memorial Airport, a public airport with no control tower. It's closed from November to March, and also when snow has covered the runways, unless your aircraft has skis. The building was not open but looks to be in rough shape inside.

Outside, the structure looks pretty good and there was access to the observation roof.

There is also a phone booth, of sorts, on the premises 😊

A historic marker provides a little background on the namesake of the airport.

But the internet provides more. Chauncey Woolsey (1813-1864) had four children before he was killed at Totopotomoy Creek, Virginia during the Civil War. His son, Byron (1859-1940), took over the dairy farm at age 14. Byron married Sarah Hall in 1879 and proceeded to have eleven children, not eight as the historic marker states. (A baby girl died at birth in 1889 and a set of twin baby girls died shortly after being born in 1897.) Byron and Sarah had seven girls that lived, and one son, Clinton, born in 1894.

Clinton enlisted in the National Guard in 1916, became a flight instructor (some allege Charles Lindbergh was a student of his), a U.S. Air Force Captain, and served overseas at the end of WWI. In 1919, he married a Red Cross Volunteer, Marietta, with whom he had two daughters.

 

The first ever Pan-American Good Will Flight took place 1926-1927 with flights to Central and South America. Ten pilots were chosen from a volunteer pool and five planes were flown. The 'Detroit' was flown by Captain Clinton Woolsey and Lt John Benton. Somewhere over Brazil, their plane collided with the 'New York' whose pilots parachuted to safety. Clinton and Benton were killed.

Byron Woolsey dedicated 80 acres of his farm to the township in 1934 on the condition it become an airport in honor of Clinton. Leelanau township donated another 120 acres and the airport was born.

Byron died in 1940, age 89, having outlived seven of his eleven children. His wife Sarah passed away in 1916 before their son's death.

Stopping by an interesting building can sometimes provide tragic yet compelling stories from the past.