USA Today article about land airports were built on

[JNA]

An airport's roots run way down deep
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/LIFE/...ABrd2_ST_U.htm

HIGHLIGHTS

Farmland was ideal for airports because the land had already been tilled and cleared of trees,

World War II also paved the way for ... many other modern-day airports. "We covered the country in airfields for military training purposes," ..... and many of those airfields later were turned over to local governments, which transformed them into commercial airports.

Several airports have links to former speedways:

Some airports sprang up on golf courses

There is a surprised land use for one airport.

Do you know the history of your local airport ?

[Richmond Jake]

.....Do you know the history of your local airport ?

The source of turpentine and paper pulp.

[mike gurnee]

Farmland. Directly across the pike (highway to you yankees) from where I grew up. It was cute until the jet era started. I only remember two crashes on our farm.

[Rygor]

Most of the airports in Arizona were simply flat desert land with a lot of them being built as training facilities for WW2 and then either converted to private/commercial use or redeveloped into subdivisions.

[mgk920]

Outagamie County Regional Airport (ATW), just west of and serves Appleton, was built in the 1960s on 'greenfield' open farmland. In fact, their newly relocated General Aviation hangar and FBO area sits on much of the land that was previously the farm that my mother grew up on.

Mike