The succession: Sportsman's Airport, Day Road, 1949

SEPTEMBER 1949 — END BRACKETED 1968–1974 · THE "NEW MISHAWAKA AIRPORT"

The dedication: In September 1949 a flying field on Day Road, on the city's far east side, was dedicated as the "new Mishawaka airport" — the Tribune's phrase of 25 September 1949, a Sunday, and independently corroborated by a record of a different kind: the Aerodacious catalog of airport dedication covers lists cover V-202, dated 25 September 1949, for "Mishawaka — Sportsman Airport." The dedication was explicitly a succession: a new Mishawaka airport implies the Dragoon Trail field's role had ended or was ending, though nothing reached documents that field's closure itself. The new field's name does not hold still in the record and all its forms are printed: Simpson's account calls the dedication field Sportsmen's Park and the later field Sportsman's Airport, "one of several referenced names for the field"; the dedication-cover catalog prints Sportsman Airport. One name is kept apart from all of them: Sportsman's Airpark in Elkhart County, a different field in the Dunlap–Goshen orbit that appears in Freeman's airfield record, is not this field and is never merged with it here.

The course: No founder, operator, club, or company is attached to Sportsman's in any source reached — the second Mishawaka field in a row whose people the record reached does not name. Its documented course is three points across nineteen years. It was dedicated in September 1949. It still appeared in the Tribune at 1 October 1968 — as a business property for sale: "50 acres, with 2-2,000 ft. runways. 2 large hangars, plus large brick office building and 3 bedroom home. Aircraft dealership could be available with purchase." A for-sale listing is a listing, not proof of active flying, and is printed as one. And in 1974 the St. Joseph County Commissioners voted to rezone a tract at 12801 Day Road, part of the old Sportsman's Airport, from residential to manufacturing, with plans to use some of the old airport buildings to manufacture pickup truck enclosures and boat trailers — the field's second life, in its own hangars. No closure date is reached; the end is bracketed 1968–1974 on this record, and nothing between dedication and sale listing — no operator, event, or accident — is reached at all. No federal directory listing or sectional-chart appearance for the field was reached either; whether it ever held one is an open question, with the CAA Directory of Airports and Seaplane Bases and the Chicago sectional charts of 1949–1968 as the settling sources.

The ground: Day Road's field repeats the 1934 pattern with a jurisdictional tell: the 1974 rezone was made by the county commissioners, not the city — the zoning authority that unincorporated Penn Township ground answers to. The tract at 12801 Day Road geocodes today as Mishawaka postal 46545, in the city's far-east corridor toward Osceola, its neighbors now residential streets and, across the road at 12800 Day Road, the Sikh Culture Society of Indiana; no airfield use or remnant is claimed for the ground by any source reached. So the two fields that carried Mishawaka's name in the age of the small airport both stood on township ground outside the corporation line, and the "Mishawaka airport" of 1934–1968 was a postal and popular fact, not a municipal one. The settling sources for the field's ownership and end are the Tribune item of 25 September 1949 itself and the county deed and 1974 rezone files for the 12801 Day Road tract.

Sources:

1. Richard M. Simpson III, "Aviation Around South Bend/Mishawaka," Indiana Transportation History, 12 November 2019, citing the South Bend Tribune of 25 September 1949 (the dedication as the "new Mishawaka airport"), the Tribune classified listing of 1 October 1968 (quoted whole), and the 1974 county rezone of 12801 Day Road with the truck-enclosure and boat-trailer reuse.
2. Aerodacious, "US Airport Dedication Covers — Indiana" (aerodacious.com) — cover V-202, dated 490925 (25 September 1949), "Mishawaka — Sportsman Airport": independent corroboration of the dedication date and a third name form.
3. Paul Freeman, "Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields: Northern Indiana" — no entry for this field; its "Sportsman's Airpark" is the Elkhart County field, kept apart in the entry above.
4. Present address record for 12801 and 12800 Day Road — postal Mishawaka 46545; the Sikh Culture Society of Indiana across the road.