This Waco UPF7 was one of three antique airplanes that Ted Kasper owned and hangared at his Lazy K Acres airstrip circa 1980s.
The Southlake Historical Society gathered information about airstrips at a "come tell us your story" social at Feedstore BBQ in 2016. Several dozen aviation enthusiasts stopped by to show us on a map where their airstrips had been and to tell stories about flying small planes over Southlake. This feature is taken from the society’s 2016 Town Hall exhibit.
Getting Their Wings
If you lived in Southlake in the 1950s, ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, it wasn’t uncommon to occasionally hear the buzz of small planes overhead as pilots young and old visited neighbors, took visitors on aerial tours of properties in Southlake or just enjoyed a flight.
There were at least 11 private grass airstrips and one public-use airstrip in then-rural Southlake. Colleyville, Keller, Flower Mound and Grapevine had airstrips, too.
“It was an exciting time because we would visit our neighbors in airplanes, and we were building airplanes and people were learning to fly and being excited about it,” remembers Zena Rucker, who with her husband, Bill, built and owned the Flying R, the only landing strip left in Southlake.
To have an airstrip, you needed a large, fairly level piece of land. You laid out your airstrip, leveled it with a tractor or bulldozer and a roller, and kept it mowed. To make use of prevailing winds, most airstrips ran north and south.
“We took a hot water heater and filled it with sand and tried to level [the airstrip], and we’d no sooner get it the way we wanted it, and here came the gophers and made big mounds in it,” Zena says. “But once you establish a good sod on it, it stays in pretty good condition.”
Few grass airfields were on maps. Everyone just knew where they were and how to get in and out.
Back then, the price for a used airplane was about $2,000 to $5,000. To make the hobby affordable, people obtained a mechanic’s license and worked on their planes themselves.
“Build and rebuild and fix and paint — we were just forever fiddling with our old airplanes,” Zena says.
Dooley Rucker and his dad, Bill, work on their Cessna 170 in 1988 at Aero Valley/Northwest Regional Airport, located north of Roanoke and still in operation.
In Southlake, most landing strips were owned by pilots or mechanics with Braniff, American or Continental. Other residents — including an optometrist, tile setter and doctor — learned to fly because they saw their neighbors flying and having fun.
By the 1990s, as Southlake became less rural, most airstrips had disappeared. But it’s still easy to imagine some of them today. Lazy K Acres airstrip is now home to Carroll High School. Stampede Sports Arena sits on the site of Goode Airport, near Southlake and Davis Boulevards. And the Winding Creek subdivision sits on the site of the Prade airstrip, along Carroll Avenue near Southlake Boulevard.
For some boys and girls in Southlake, learning to fly was a part of growing up.
- Dooley Rucker was 15 in the early 1970s when his pilot dad taught him how to take off and land in a Piper Cub. He soloed on his 16th birthday.
Adventuresome Dooley flew up and down runways being constructed at DFW before it opened. He got into trouble for buzzing a friend’s sailboat on Lake Grapevine and for flying around the Ross Downs racetrack on Friday nights during the motorcycle races. His freshman year at the University of Texas, he flew his airplane to Austin instead of taking his car. (Freshmen had a hard time getting a car parking permit.)
Dooley flew for Northwest Airlines and for years was its youngest pilot, then its youngest captain. He retired in 2014 and continues to fly his Cub.
“I don’t fly into Mom’s [Zena Rucker’s] place anymore,” Dooley says. “Just too much congestion.”
- A Southlake man who wishes to remain anonymous remembers that as a teenage pilot in the ‘70s, he dropped rolls of toilet paper over the homes of friends.
- In 1973, 15-year-old student pilot David “Rusty” Rhodes and his 18-year-old friend and flight instructor Steve White took off from Goode Airport to visit Steve’s grandmother in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. They flew a Cessna 140, tail number N90000. Thunderstorms on their first day caused them to lay over in Columbus, Georgia, Rusty noted in his log book.
In 2023, Rusty retired after 42 years from Delta as the airline’s number one pilot. He and his wife continue flying in their Cessna 172.
Special thanks to the city of Southlake’s Geographic Information Systems analyst Patrick Whitham, who created this map.
Where The 12 Airstrips In Southlake Were Located
1. GOODE – On the south side of Southlake Boulevard between Davis Boulevard and Peytonville Avenue. Built by Bob Goode. Known as Flying G, then Goode Field and finally Goode Airport.
2. COPE – Near the northeast corner of Peytonville Avenue and Continental Boulevard in what’s now the Chimney Hill subdivision. Built by John Cope.
3. ROBERTSON – South of Southlake Boulevard and west of Davis Boulevard, near what’s now the Watermere complex.
4. HEFLEY – Near the intersection of Union Church Road and Pearson Lane inside the Southlake city limits.
5. CLOW – On the west side of Shady Oaks Drive across from what’s now Durham Intermediate School. Built by Les Clow, an American Airlines pilot, and his wife, Virginia, after they moved to Southlake in 1958. Virginia had earned her pilot’s license at age 15, but a heart murmur kept her from ferrying planes during World War II.
6. KASPER – On the west side of White Chapel Boulevard and north of Southlake Boulevard. Built by Ted Kasper, an American Airlines pilot. It sat where Carroll High School is today.
7. KREYCIK – On the west side of Sunshine Lane and north of Highland Street. Built by Charles “Bill” Kreycik, a Texas International (Continental) pilot. “There is nothing like taking off over a bunch of gopher mounds,” remembers his grandson.
8. JACKSON – North of the Kreycik airstrip along Sunshine Lane. Built by Bill Jackson, a pilot for American Airlines.
9. PRADE – South of Southlake Boulevard along Carroll Avenue. Pilots Chauncey and Mary Elizabeth Owens Prade bought the property after World War II and built the Flying Cap airstrip. Today, it’s the site of the Winding Creek subdivision.
10. RUCKER – On the west side of Carroll Avenue south of Southlake Boulevard. Built by Bill and Zena Rucker in the mid-’60s, the Flying R landing strip is about 2,000 feet long. Bill was a pilot when the airstrip was built and Zena later became one. The only airstrip left in Southlake, although it’s no longer used.
11. CARNEY – North of Continental and west of Breeze Way, now part of the Timarron subdivision. Built by Calvin Carney.
12. BANKS – Near E. Southlake Boulevard and the Highway 114 frontage road, about where QuikTrip is now. The airstrip, used for pilot training, was there from World War II until about 1953 when it was sold and turned into a drag racing strip. Built by Weldon Banks.
Dive Deeper Into Southlake's Airstrips:
50 Acres, Two Runways, Several Hangars & A Family: The Story Of Lazy K Acres
Airport Affected By Winds Of Change
Woman Pilot Aimed High: Mary Elizabeth Owens Prade
The Southlake Historical Society, a 501c3 organization, was founded in the early 1990s by Gary Fickes, a former mayor of Southlake and now a Tarrant County commissioner, who put an ad in "The Grapevine Sun” newspaper asking people interested in Southlake history to come together. The society’s goal is to promote the preservation, understanding and appreciation of Southlake history. In other words, “Preserve the Tradition.”
Visit the Southlake Historical Society’s website at SouthlakeHistory.org.