Urban Aviation Anchorage airstrips tie the city to the sky.

• Author: Pesznecker, Katie

Areas of Alaska accessible only by airplane have elevated Bush pilots into heroes and contributed to the state having the most aircraft per capita, by far. One in fiftyeight Alaskans holds a pilot's license, practically a necessity when 82 percent of communities are isolated except by air. Rural Alaska's dependence on aviation is well understood, yet air travel has also shaped the state's biggest city. Downtown Anchorage is literally defined by the edge of Delaney Park, formerly the city's first airstrip. Beyond its reputation as the Air Crossroads of the World, Anchorage also sits at the crossroads of general aviation.

"The Anchorage airspace is so complicated that the Federal Aviation Administration has come up with special rules and procedures just to operate inside the Anchorage airspace," says Adam White, who manages government and legislative affairs for the Alaska Airmen's Association. "We've got F-22s and Super Cubs in the same air space as 747s coming in. It's crazy!"

Fighter jets zoom over Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. Merrill Field, the city's first airport in 1930, is now the second busiest in the state. Alaska's busiest, of course, is Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC), adjacent to Lake Hood Seaplane Base, the most active of its kind in the world.

Apart from those major hubs, grassy airstrips and floatplane slips dot the Anchorage Bowl and outlying areas. The landscape shows a history where runway-ready aviators took advantage of existing geographical features or, in some cases, took matters into their own hands.

"Dunkle's Ditch" was the moniker assigned to the runway canal completed in 1940 that joined Lake Spenard with Lake Hood to create the seaplane base. The canal concept came from geologist and aviator Wesley Earl Dunkle, who walked away from a crash in 1936 while taking off from Lake Spenard. Many Anchorage lakes used by pilots were less than ideal, according to historian David Reamer. Another man-made water option today is Campbell Lake Seaplane Base, dammed into existence by developers in 1959, known for its lavish lakeside homes.

Anchorage hosts two neighborhood airparks: the grassy Flying Crown Airpark in Oceanview, paralleling Alaska Railroad tracks, which dates to the '50s; and Sky Harbor Airport, a residential runway alongside Cange Street, between Huffman and O'Malley roads, where taxiways double as driveways. Both are tended by homeowners' associations and lightly used by residents.

Elsewhere in the municipality, Eagle River has a couple of smaller, private airstrips, and also Fire Lake, between the Old and New Glenn Highways, a seaplane base for aircraft on floats...