The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
the county's first airport, on Clay ground
South Bend's first airport stood on Clay Township ground, in present-day Granger. The original South Bend Airport lay northeast of the city, north of State Road 23 and west of Fir Road — ground that is Granger today, in Clay Township. The South Bend Tribune of 1 April 1973 remembered it as a field of "four hangars, fairly good runways for that era, and was the principal air terminal for South Bend." Vincent Hugo Bendix bought land northwest of South Bend in 1929, and Bendix Municipal Airport — the field that became South Bend International — opened in 1933, which leaves the Granger field as the county's first, not its successor. In 1942 it was taken up again for the war: the Tribune of 9 August 1942 records that "today will mark the official opening of Cadet field, formerly known as the old St. Joseph county airport, located six miles northeast of the city near the Edwardsburg road," its new purpose the training of pilots. No current FAA identifier belongs to it; it predates the present 5010 listing and is long closed. Its existence is strong and its details moderate — a county newspaper quoted in a county aviation history — and it is the only "first" this township's aviation record holds.
Sources: Indiana Transportation History, "Aviation Around South Bend/Mishawaka" (November 12, 2019), quoting the South Bend Tribune of April 1, 1973 and August 9, 1942, verbatim; the South Bend International Airport record (Bendix Municipal Airport opened 1933).