Paynes Airport

The airport was a privately owned and operated turf landing strip. The closure was almost certainly due to personal reasons of the owner, which is the most common cause for the closure of such airfields. This can include the owner's retirement from flying, health reasons, sale of the property, or the owner passing away. There is no evidence to suggest the closure was due to a specific accident, regulatory action, or broader economic reasons.

The site is currently private property and has been fully converted back to agricultural use. Satellite imagery shows the location as an active farmstead. The faint outline of the former runway is still visible as a mowed grass lane within a larger cultivated field, but it is no longer maintained or marked as an active runway. The buildings on the property appear to be in use as a standard farm.

Paynes Airport was a classic example of a private, grassroots American airfield. Its significance was primarily local, serving as a personal landing strip for its owner and likely a few associates. Operations would have consisted of light, single-engine general aviation aircraft used for recreational flying. The facility featured a single, unpaved turf runway, estimated to be about 2,200 feet long, oriented in a northwest/southeast direction. While not historically significant on a national level, it represented the freedom and passion of private aviation that has been a core part of American flight history.

There are no known plans or prospects for reopening Paynes Airport. Since the land is privately owned and has been repurposed for agriculture, any potential reopening would be solely at the discretion and expense of the current landowner. Given the general trend of private airfields closing permanently, the prospect of this site returning to aviation use is extremely low to non-existent.