Mountain Road Airport Has Been A Hidden Treasure For 61 Years

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By Hayley Gable Bowerman


It was during the morning hours of September 11, 2001, when Pasadena native Henry Schmidt received an alarming phone call from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration regarding his family’s Mountain Road Airport. As Schmidt watched the day’s tragic events unfold on live television, the FAA advised him to immediately report any suspicious activity around his 150-acre property tucked back along Schmidt’s Lane.

The landing field and plane lodging property, which has been registered and commercially zoned as the Mountain Road Airport since 1951, had at the time housed a few small airplanes owned by locals. As Schmidt investigated his property that morning, however, he was alarmed to discover one of his planes was missing.

“Right away, I called the FAA and reported the plane missing. It was owned by a local guy with top clearance who flew a few times a week as a hobby,” recalled Schmidt. “Turns out, it was a mistake. The owner of the plane had no idea what was going on and he was soon escorted back to the airport by a government-owned F-18.”

The startling incident is just one of many Henry Schmidt can tell about his family’s 61-year-old airport, located off the Mountain Road and Route 100 intersection.

“There have been a lot of pilots, a lot of planes, and a lot of interesting events that have happened along the way,” added Schmidt, who currently only houses one plane on the property. “After 9/11, a lot of restrictions were put in place for commercial airfields. I still keep it commercially zoned, but it’s mostly just joy riders who come in and out of here these days,” he said.

What many locals do not realize, Schmidt explained, is the airport was not originally founded at its current location. Established in 1938 as The Whipp Airport and Seaplane Base, it was initially located in Glen Burnie just off East Furnace Branch Road and Margate Drive, where the Country Club Estates community now stands. Ed Whipp, who owned the property, ran the airport and lived on its premises while it functioned through the ‘40s.

However, as plans moved forward and development began on Country Club Estates in the ‘50s, local pilots found themselves in need of a new place to launch, land and house their planes. Schmidt, who was friends with many of the pilots at the time, began offering to board their planes at his family’s vegetable farm on Mountain Road.

“We started out with just two planes in ’51, and 10 years later we had 42 planes based at our field,” Schmidt said proudly.

The piece of farm land-turned-airfield property has been traced back to 1683, when Schmidt’s relatives – prominently known within the area as The Hancocks from Hancock’s Resolution – founded and maintained that particular piece of Pasadena. Henry’s father, William Schmidt, purchased the farm in 1920 and started a produce stand in 1927, where he sold vegetables and other farming products to locals and summer visitors to Gibson Island. The produce stand, which closed in 1967, remains situated on the entrance to Schmidt’s Lane to this day.

“My father and I were farmers, so we really had no interest in learning how to fly planes at the time. I just enjoyed being out on the tractor and watching them from the field,” added Schmidt.
After a few years of watching his friends become licensed pilots and fly their planes into and out of his family’s airport, Henry decided it was time to finally join the club.

“Without a doubt, getting my pilot’s license has been the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done,” he noted. “It’s the best feeling in the world to be up in the sky all by yourself.”

In the 60 years the airport has existed, there have been 10 mishaps on record - all caused by pilot error. During one incident in the 1960s, military special services called and requested use of Schmidt’s 1,600-foot landing strip to practice night landing techniques with 20 commando planes. One by one, Henry watched as 19 of the 20 planes landed tactfully on the dirt and grass runway.

“The last one goofed up and overshot the runway. There was a lot of commotion that night,” remembers Schmidt. “County police showed up and said there had been a noise complaint. I said, ‘Yeah, we’ve got 20 military-issued commandos practicing here,” he laughed.

There was also the occurrence of a newly licensed pilot who had just bought his first airplane and was having it flown directly into the Mountain Road airport by the seller. “He missed the runway completely and the plane was destroyed. Poor guy never even got to fly it,” said Schmidt with amazement.

There was also the episode where a man accidentally landed his airplane directly on another plane. “Thankfully, no one has ever been too badly injured in any of these events,” commented Schmidt.

Weather has played a critical role at the airport as well. In the late ‘60s, a tornado took out over 100 feet of the landing strip and destroyed three planes. When Hurricane Isabel struck in 2003, the airport – along with the rest of Pasadena – was suddenly underwater. These days, Schmidt maintains the property himself, and, as a member of the International Flying Farmers, he occasionally donates the use of his farm to the Maryland Department of Agriculture for mosquito spraying operations.

Of all the stories and memories Schmidt has from his family’s airplane farm, he’s quick to recall his favorite. “My mother had never before been in a plane, but as a surprise I took her up one day and flew her over the farm where she was born, over near what is now Kurtz’s Beach,” he said with a smile. “She was really excited.”

For now, even though the Mountain Road Airport only houses a single plane, Schmidt and his friends continue to occasionally fly to Delaware, Pennsylvania and the Eastern Shore for weekend getaways.
“We like to reminisce,” he said. “There are lots of stories to tell.”

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