Business View Magazine | September 2020

159 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 2020 CL INTONV I LLE MUNI C I PAL A I RPORT was founded in 1944. Fostered and promoted by the Four Wheel Drive Auto Company, the airline was an outgrowth of the company’s need for air transportation. Four Wheel Drive had been operating a non-scheduled airline service to Chicago for months before making application for scheduled airline service to the Civil Aeronautics Board in June, 1944. Since beginning service on February 1, 1948, with a fleet of three nine-passenger twin-engine aircraft, North Central has become one of the largest of the local service air carriers in the country. Its routes provide the basis of Wisconsin’s airline system serving all of the state’s air carrier airports. Following a merger with Southern Airways in 1979, North Central became Republic Airlines, which, in turn, was merged into Northwest Airlines in 1986. Northwest Airlines was then merged into Delta Air Lines in 2010. Today, Clintonville is a GA airport, only, and home to about 30 general aviation aircraft and several aeronautical-based businesses, including technology. “As the need progressed for a better airport, the city purchased some farmland and in the late 1930s and early ‘40s, we created a municipal airport,” McCord recounts. “It was used extensively by the FWD, the military, and other businesses involved with the manufacturing of those trucks that the military contracted us to build for them during World War II. The Airport grew and we developed three improved runways – two asphalt and one grass. And then, we became a popular airport for recreational aircraft, as well.” Today, FWD, which became the Seagrave Group, makes specialized, high- end fire trucks, employing about 400 people in Clintonville. Another interesting bit of history linked to the Clintonville Airport is reflected in an historical marker erected on the border of the airfield: It was here in Clintonville that Wisconsin Central Airlines, now known as North Central Airlines,