User:Vtaylor/Spruce Creek

History

The People and Planes of Spruce Creek The Fly-In’s developer, McKinley Conway, found the site as he flew around the country during the 1960s, looking for the perfect place to design his dream airport city. more...

Soon after WWII McKinley Conway bought a used single-engine Cessna 170 and began using it for business travel around the USA. He quickly discovered that he had great mobility in the air but on the ground there was very little. more...

The 1800’s... Long before there were airplanes, a small village thrived in what is now occupied by the Spruce Creek Fly-in. The village’s cemetery is all that remains and stands today as colorful testament of Spruce Creek’s early settlers. For the last two hundred years it has served as a final resting place to area inhabitants. Among the graves with the older headstones we find that Civil War soldiers are buried there. more...

It took a war —and the urgent need for planes and pilots—to transform the marshy Spruce Creek flatland into an airfield. In 1942 the U. S. Navy was hurriedly constructing training fields throughout the eastern half of Florida, including a base at DeLand, Florida for pilots learning to fly the Douglas SBD Devastator dive bomber. Outlying airfields were built at nearby New Smyrna and Samsula for the fledgling Navy pilots to practice take offs and landings. more...

Ken Renner's late Grandmother, Eunice Lewis, told the tale about the Army Air Corps having to get her father's signature, as well that of others who had loved ones buried there, acknowledging that for the duration of the war (W.W.II) he would not be able to visit the graves of his parents. more...

Spruce Creek Airport - It was originally constructed during World War II as an outlying field (OLF) to nearby Naval Air Station DeLand and NAS Daytona Beach. OLF Spruce Creek originally had four paved 4,000 foot runways and was abandoned by the U.S. Navy in 1946. more,,,