Qualla: Horace Williams Airport

Horace Williams Airport: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The PNM., CC BY-SA 3.0. An airport named for a philosopher is a strange thing to find on the FAA charts, but for seventy-eight years that's what sat one nautical mile north of downtown Chapel Hill: KIGX, Horace Williams Airport, named for the man who chaired the Department of Mental and Moral Science at the University of North Carolina during the first half of the twentieth century. The airport had a single 4,005-foot asphalt runway designated 9/27, four hundred and twenty acres of land at 512 feet elevation, and a long, slow, often-bitter argument over whether it should still exist. In May 2018, the argument finally ended. A NOTAM went out. The airplanes were moved out before May 1. On May 15, the runway officially closed - and a solar energy project moved in.

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Image: The PNM. | CC BY-SA 3.0

Horace Williams Airport: Martindale Field

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ildar Sagdejev (Specious), CC BY-SA 3.0. Before it bore a philosopher's name, the field belonged to Lee Martindale, a Chapel Hill contractor who carved out one of the first airstrips in North Carolina in the late 1920s and called it Martindale Field. He offered pilot training and air shows - the kind of barnstorming fly...

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Image: Ildar Sagdejev (Specious) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Horace Williams Airport: The University's Strip

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ildar Sagdejev (Specious), CC BY-SA 3.0. Horace Williams Airport was never a busy field by national standards, but for the university it mattered. UNC's Area Health Education Centers - the AHEC program that flew medical specialists to rural North Carolina hospitals - was based here, with six aircraft running missions to...

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Image: Ildar Sagdejev (Specious) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Horace Williams Airport: Carolina North

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ildar Sagdejev (Specious), CC BY-SA 3.0. In 2000 the university announced what it called the Carolina North project - a planned expansion of UNC's campus onto the airport land. The airport, the trustees decided, had to go. General aviation pilots and lobbyists fought back hard, arguing that once a small airfield closed ...

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Image: Ildar Sagdejev (Specious) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Horace Williams Airport: Sun Over Runway 9/27

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ildar Sagdejev (Specious), CC BY-SA 3.0. On May 15, 2018, after years of delay, Horace Williams Airport closed for good. The aircraft were gone by May 1. The closure wasn't for Carolina North after all - economic realities had stalled that project. The land was instead leased for a solar energy installation, the kind th...

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Image: Ildar Sagdejev (Specious) | CC BY-SA 3.0