The airfield test: the Mishawaka Pilots Club, and no airport in the city

1947-PRESENT · A POSITIVE CLUB AND A NEGATIVE FIELD

The test: The test this entry runs is the one the section owes the record: did Mishawaka ever have an airfield of its own? The answer comes back divided, and both halves are printed. Positive: Mishawaka has had its own flying institution since 1947, the Mishawaka Pilots Club, founded that year on the club's own history. Negative: no airport inside Mishawaka's city limits appears in the record reached, and the club itself has flown from fields outside the city throughout its life. The regional airport is South Bend's — South Bend International, in that city's record — and Mishawaka's air story is the club's, not a field's.

The club's course: The club's wanderings are documented in the South Bend Tribune's account of 25 November 2012: the club keeps flying from the airport it established on Mishawaka Road in Elkhart County, having settled on the land in 1957 after having to leave three earlier sites; at that telling it kept about 70 airplanes and 165 members. The club's members had formed the Airport Realty Corporation, 65 shareholders, which owns more than 100 acres at the field. The field flies today as the Mishawaka Pilots Club Airport, FAA identifier 3C1, listed at Osceola with an Elkhart address — 29580 County Road 20 — in Elkhart County east of the city, with about 65 airplanes based and more than a hundred members in the club's present account: a Mishawaka institution by name, membership and seventy-nine years of continuity, seated outside the city it is named for. Where the three pre-1957 fields stood is not in the sources reached; the club's own records and the Tribune

Sources:

1. Wikipedia, "Mishawaka Pilots Club," from the club's own history — the club founded in 1947.
2. South Bend Tribune, 25 November 2012, via Kathryn's Report — the club settled in 1957 on Mishawaka Road in Elkhart County after three earlier sites; the Airport Realty Corporation of 65 shareholders and its hundred-plus acres; about 70 planes and 165 members at that date.
3. Mishawaka Pilots Club and the FAA airport record — the Mishawaka Pilots Club Airport, identifier 3C1, 29580 County Road 20, Elkhart (listed at Osceola), public use, about 65 airplanes based.