Shute Airport

While not officially documented, the closure was almost certainly due to personal and economic reasons. Shute Airport was a small, privately owned turf strip. Such airfields often close when the owner retires, passes away, sells the land, or finds the cost and liability of maintenance prohibitive. There is no evidence of military conversion, a major accident, or regulatory action forcing the closure.

The site of the former Shute Airport has been completely returned to agricultural use. High-resolution satellite imagery of the coordinates shows the land is now an active, cultivated farm field. There are no visible traces of the former runway, taxiways, or any aviation buildings like hangars. The property is indistinguishable from the surrounding farmland.

Shute Airport held local significance as a private general aviation facility. It was owned by an individual, Wilbur Shute, and primarily served personal and recreational flying needs. First appearing in aviation directories in the early 1980s, its operations were modest. The airport featured a single unpaved turf runway, approximately 2,600 feet in length, suitable for light single-engine aircraft. It may have also supported local agricultural aviation operations (e.g., crop dusting), which is common for private strips in rural farming areas like Lebanon, Kansas. It never handled commercial, scheduled, or military traffic.

There are no known plans or prospects for reopening Shute Airport. The land has been fully reclaimed for private agriculture, and its physical infrastructure has been entirely removed. Re-establishing an airport on the site would be prohibitively expensive and require converting productive farmland, making any such prospect extremely unlikely.