O-5 Turnley Hodgson House*

Richard and Carra Turnley were among the first residents of Arthurdale when they moved in on July 15, 1934. Their house on your left is now covered in blue siding. They raised four sons here, one of whom became manager of the Arthurdale Airstrip, a small regional airstrip used mainly in the 1950s.

Rural airfields were more common in the mid-20th century than they are today. Even towns as small as Arthurdale could have an airstrip, and, in fact, air travel was an increasingly common method of transportation around the Mountain State after World War II. The southern coalfields of West Virginia alone once had at least 40 rural airfields (Tan), though today that number is much lower. In the late twentieth century, with many pilots trained in combat during World War II, air travel revolutionized transportation around West Virginia as it was much faster to fly than drive around the mountains. However, as highways were built, these airfields and the costs to maintain them were in many cases no longer worth the effort as these small airfields had to maintain the runways and planes, along with staff and crews. The airfield that used to exist at O-5 is part of Arthurdale’s history after the government project here ended. Today, this airfield, like many others in the state, is a memory. To learn more about air travel in West Virginia, we recommend the Inside Appalachia podcast included in the citations below.

Arthurdale Heritage, Preserving Arthurdale, WV – Eleanor Roosevelt's New Deal Community. Arthurdale Heritage Inc.. Accessed March 20, 2017. http://www.arthurdaleheritage.org/.

“Flying High In, From, and Around Appalachia.” Inside Appalachia. WV Public Broadcasting. 7 August 2020. www.wvpublic.org/podcast/inside-appalachia/2020-08-07/flying-high-in-from-and-around-appalachia

Haid, Stephen Edward. "Arthurdale: An Experiment in Community Planning, 1933-1947." Master's thesis, West Virginia University, 1975.

Maloney, C. J. Back to the Land: Arthurdale, FDRs New Deal, and the Costs of Economic Planning. John Wiley & Sons, 2013.

Patterson, Stuart. “A New Pattern of Life: The Public Past and Present of Two New Deal Communities.” Doctoral Thesis, Emory University, 2006.

Penix, Amanda Griffith. Images of America: Arthurdale. Arcadia Publishing, 2007.

Tan, Caitlin. “West Virginia's Southern Airfields: Where Did They Go?” 100 Days in Appalachia, 14 August 2020. www.100daysinappalachia.com/2020/08/w-vas-southern-coalfield-airports-where-did-they-go/

Ward, Bryan. A New Deal for America. Arthurdale Heritage Inc., 1995