Ultimate Issue: The Connection Between Airports and God’s Acres

There are many places where runways share space with cemeteries.

Wednesday, July 10, 2024 at 09:07 AM ET

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Members of the Dodson family, Daniel Hueston and John Dotson, are buried alongside Runway 10 at Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport (KSAV). [Courtesy: Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport]

Key Takeaways:

The author observes a surprising number of cemeteries located on or integrated into airport properties, stemming from airports expanding onto existing land.
Airports manage these historical burial grounds in various ways, including relocating graves (e.g., O'Hare, Smith Reynolds) or incorporating them into the airport's master plan, sometimes even between or directly beneath runways (e.g., Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson, Savannah/Hilton Head).
Notable examples include Savannah/Hilton Head's unique "Graveyard Tour" for pilots and the "Portal of the Folded Wings" at Hollywood Burbank, a dedicated shrine serving as the final resting place for aviation pioneers.

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Sitting in the Pioneer Cemetery on a knoll across the street from Lunken Airport in Cincinnati, I was thinking about cemeteries and airports (imagine that).

It is a lovely, peaceful spot set on a knoll, but most of the remains—people who went down the Ohio River and settled on the flat ground below in the late 1700s—were reinterred up here above the floodplain. That large, flat area, called the Turkey Bottoms, would become “Sunken Lunken” Airport in the early 1920s.

Martha Lunken

Martha Lunken is a lifelong pilot, former FAA inspector and defrocked pilot examiner. She flies a Cessna 180 and anything with a tailwheel, from Cubs to DC-3s.