by Barbara Rimkunas
This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, June 3, 2022.
When former president Dwight D. Eisenhower arrived in Exeter by helicopter in 1962, he landed at the Phillips Exeter Academy playing fields and not the Exeter airport. Logistically, it made sense to place his arrival on Academy grounds (he was visiting his grandson who was attending the school) rather than the airport on Linden Street. It also made sense because there wasn’t an airport on Linden Street, even though there had been proposals to build one there since the 1940s.
Aviation blew into the 20th century with amazing speed. Most people first read about airplanes in the newspapers and later saw them at the movies. Just fifteen years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight in 1903, airplanes were being used during World War I. The first time Exeter residents began looking skyward at a plane seems to have been in June of 1921. “Much attention was attracted Saturday afternoon to an air plane flying over Exeter,” reported the Exeter News-Letter. “It was doubtless that referred to in the following item from Friday’s Concord Monitor: ‘Lieut Robert S. Fogg will go to Hampton Beach via the air route tomorrow to pass the weekend.’ The air plane was also seen on the return trip Monday.” Fogg didn’t land his plane in Exeter – there wasn’t a landing strip.
The first time we hear about landing a plane in Exeter is in November 1927. Aviators George Mosher and Mark Ridge of Boston, “were on a flight to Derry, when finding themselves off their course, they landed on the Miller farm Monday evening.” Max A. Miller’s farm is on Newfields Road. It had exactly what the fragile airplane needed – a flat straight plot to avoid crashing. We can only wonder what Miller initially thought about it, but he seemed amenable enough to allow the two men to stay for a full week. “For much of the time since they have circled above Exeter and they expect to remain here until Sunday,” reported the paper. While here, they offered rides at $5.00 each for 15 minutes over Exeter. It is entirely possible that they weren’t actually off course at all, given the profit incentive. In any case, the paper noted, “This is the first time a plane has paid so long a visit to Exeter and never before, it is believed, has one landed here.” As such, we’ll call Miller’s farm on Newfields Road the first Exeter Airfield. Miller later sold the land to John Smith, who, with the help of George Dearborn, Jr., and Clarence Dimock, considered a more permanent landing strip. The Portsmouth Herald reported, “Several times in the past various pilots have landed their planes there, but never until recently has it been thought of seriously as a landing field.”
The following February, Jady Hill dairy farmer J. Everett Towle was surprised when a low circling plane landed in front of his house. The pilot, August Pabst, was a Phillips Exeter Academy alum and member of the Harvard Flying Club. He had taken it upon himself to fly from Boston to Exeter to visit Principal Perry. Perry was out of town, but Mr. Towle was gracious enough to take Pabst over to Harriet Tilton’s place on the river. He had boarded there during his school days in Exeter. Pabst had hoped to land on the Academy playing fields, but the conditions were unfavorable. Towle seemed to like the idea of his land being an airfield. Although not listed on any maps or directories, there are occasional references to the airfield at Jady Hill. A story about snow removal in 1948 references a snow dump “in the Hayes field near the airport off Jady Hill,” and in 1954 a hot-rod auto club, “secured permission to use the airplane hangar off Jady Hill for a meeting place.” We can place our second Exeter Airfield there.
In 1940, with war again looming, the newly created Civil Aeronautics Administration issued a 10-year plan for national airport development. On the list of proposed locations was Exeter. There were only a few airports on the seacoast, including the Portsmouth Municipal Airport. Exeter would be a small Class I port with a runway of 1,800 to 2,700 feet – shorter than the one at Hampton-Rye Beach. But Exeter would have to incur some of the proposed costs, and the plan never came about.
After the war, with the return of military pilots, there was more interest in opening small airfields. Brothers Paul and Francis Bergeron began building an airfield on Linden Street on the old Wadleigh property. In October of 1946, the News-Letter ran a lengthy article about the project. “Two Exeter brothers, Paul and Francis Bergeron, veterans of World War II, have just begun to realize their post-war ambitions now that they have returned to civilian life. Boasting a landing field with a grass strip runway 2,000 feet long, a new Piper Cub, the locality’s enthusiasm for flying and a score if signers for student instruction, they are operating off Linden Street.” They moved a hangar that Paul and his friend, Clarence Dimock, had used before the war from its original location in Raymond. The grassy runway was still there in 1958 when Victor Loranger of Newmarket, applied to the NH Aeronautics Commission for use of the land as a registered airfield. He planned to use it for aerial advertising and a flying school. Unfortunately for him, the locals were not as enamored of aviation as were earlier residents. Airplanes were noisy and, with the high school just up the road, a hazard. After a petition was filed against it, Loranger withdrew his application. Just the same, there was a functioning airfield on Linden Street, so this counts as the third Exeter Airport.
There was another gasp of aviation in town. In 1977, the New Hampshire Parachute Club began using a private piece of land on Epping Road to fly and drop its members. There were immediate complaints from neighbors. At a contentious Zoning Board of Appeals meeting in July, the skydivers faced off against the residents. Not only was the noise a problem, but folks also said, the jumpers were a traffic hazard. Mrs. William Gardner, “said chutists had landed in her backyard Memorial Day weekend and she didn’t want it to happen again.” The variance was denied by unanimous vote of the ZBA. Although it was technically in violation of the local zoning ordinances, we’ll call the NHPC airstrip the final Exeter Airport. Maybe there’s still one in our future – or perhaps we’ll finally get those flying cars we’ve been waiting for.
Barbara Rimkunas is curator of the Exeter Historical Society. Support the Exeter Historical Society by becoming a member! Join online at: www.exeterhistory.org.
Image: Paul and Francis Bergeron in their Piper Cub. The Civil Aeronautics Board suggested Exeter as a potential site for an airport in the 1940s. The Bergerons started to build a potential airstrip on the former Wadleigh Farm on Linden Street, but the neighbors objected and the project was dropped.