Aviation View | Volume 2, Issue 2

25 AVIATION VIEW VOLUME 2, ISSUE 2 UPS or FedEx, and we’re trying to figure out a way for grant money to help pay for the cost of running infrastructure uphill. There is a great opportunity here!” That opportunity is directly related to the city’s rich past and offers another reason why the airport is important to economic development in the region. Juhasz explains, “Alexander Dunsmuir, who was the son of a British Columbian coal baron named Robert Dunsmuir, offered to purchase a fountain for the city as long as it renamed it in his honor. That fountain has been moved to a ballfield here – one that Babe Ruth took a liking to. He spent time here and carried on exhibition games. So, it’s a tourist town with a rich history.” “In terms of outdoor activities,” he continues, “people have been hunting and trapping here since the early 1800s and it continued when the Central Pacific Railroad made this a hub. That was when many well to do families from San Francisco started visiting. William Randolph Hearst occupied a 67,000-acre estate called Wyntoon, named after a local Native American tribe; August Schilling, the ‘spice king’, was a long-standing member of the McCloud River Club; and today, the Fisher family, which owns the Gap clothing empire, has three Pilatus aircraft that use the airport regularly to access the renowned private club on the McCloud River – a club which they now own.” The most recent major infrastructure project was the refurbishment of the runway. It now has a completely new asphalt covering, after a $3.2 million grant-funded project by the FAA. They also made a pilots’ lounge in the city-owned hangar. This refurbishment, incredibly, was finished just in the nick of time when it comes to forest fires. The ribbon cutting ceremony took place just as the massive Lava Fire erupted in the nearby forest. The U.S. Forest Service had their Chinook helicopter parked at the airport for fire fighting even before the Lava Fire grew to cover more than 20,000 acres. This, again, DUNSMUI R MUNI C I PAL -MOTT A I RPORT