This is the first in a planned series of stories describing state by state the airparks listed in the Living With Your Plane Directory. We’re starting with Alaska and will tackle one state per issue unless there is a particularly low number of airparks in that particular state. In that case, we’ll try to do several states in the same story.

As always, we welcome your comments and ideas and of course, if you have information about other residential airparks in Alaska or any other state, we urge you to contact us.

The Living With Your Plane Directory of Residential Airparks lists nine Alaska facilities. As you might expect for airparks in our most northern state, seven of the nine airparks report their home lots are more than one acre. Only two indicated they have home lots of less than an acre.

Among the airparks currently listed in the directory, only two of the nine have paved runways. The remainder are dirt or grass. The information provided by the developers or management of the airparks reveals that seven have obstructions in the approach and departure corridors, one claims nothing in the way and the ninth failed to provide us information one way or the other.

All the airparks report their home lots are on individual water wells and also on individual septic tanks. Building restrictions of one kind or another are in place at seven of the airpark properties while the other two indicate there are no limitations on what a person may or may not build on an individual lot.

Fuel isn’t available at any of the airparks.

The longest runway at any of the airparks in our directory is 2,600 feet. That’s reported at two airparks. Another one is listed at 2,587 feet. There’s one at 2,200 feet, three are 2,000 feet long, another is 1,750 feet and the shortest reports its runway is only 1075 feet. That airport’s elevation is listed at 120 MSL. The oldest airpark claims its history back to 1954 while the one that opened most recently did so in 2005. Other openings included one each in 1970, 1972, 1981, 1985, 1990 and 1994.

The nine airparks are as follows:

• Alaska Airpark at Sterling
• Anchor Point River Airpark at Anchor Point
• Flying Crown Airpark in Anchorage
• Honeybee Lake Aero Park at Willow
• Rustic Wilderness in Willow
• Shirley Lake at Willow
• Sky Ranch at Pioneer Peak in Palmer
• Wolf Lake Airport in Palmer
• Wright’s Airfield at North Pole

Incidentally, Alaska Airpark is the only one for which we have a website listed. It is:
www.AlaskaAirpark.com.