FAIRMONT, Neb. (AP) - The Fairmont Army Air Field was bustling as World War II was fought in Europe and the Pacific.
Life remains today on the 1,980-acre base - one of 11 built in Nebraska during the war - however population and pace of life are very different in 2015 than they were when the 451st Bombardment Group arrived in September 1943, the York News-Times (https://bit.ly/1JjOV0R ) reported.
During its war service the airfield housed B-24, B-17 and B-29 bombers with barracks to accommodate 6,000 officers and enlisted men. At 350 beds the Fairmont Army Air Base Hospital was the largest in Nebraska.
The historical marker near Highway 81 to the west of the base reads: “In September 1944 Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets visited Fairmont and selected the 393rd Bomb Squadron of the 504th to join the 509th Composite Group at Wendover Field, Utah. This group dropped both atomic bombs on Japan.”
Having completed its original mission the facility was declared surplus by the government in 1946.
Though life is very different there now, the transformed base nonetheless lives on.
Far the most daily activity takes place at All-Around Lawn and Landscaping owned by Ben and Ashley Ulmer.
Ashley said the business has been located among the old runways for “close to 10 years.”
One former runway behind the full-service landscape and turf business’ buildings provides a hard surface upon which a multitude of aggregate, rocks and stone are stockpiled for easy viewing by customers and handling for employees.
On the other side of the building is the company’s expansive sod farm. Hard-surfaced access to both sides of the sprawling plot of turf grass is via another runway that tracks right down the middle.
Across the road from the Ulmers’ operation stand several enormous piles of what looks from the distance like some kind of rock, but is in fact tons and tons of corn cobs.
The cobs, stockpiled by Green Products headquartered in Conrad, Iowa, will be ground up and made into any one of numerous products.
Most nursing home aviaries, for instance, have a thick layer of bird litter of corn cobs made by Green Products in the bottom. Pet bedding is another among many ways the innovative company turns former waste material in the direction of new uses.
Its characteristics as an abrasive make the product suitable to clean, dry and polish metal parts in tumbling and vibratory finishing machines or to prepare surfaces for painting.
Because it’s absorbent the material is ideal as a carrier for insecticide, herbicide and even medications, or to solidify the sludge from oil field fracking operations.
All three elements of the corn cob are remarkably absorbent. A single pound of pith and chaff, in fact, will soak up some four pounds of water. A pound of grit made from the woody outer ring of the cobs soaks up its own weight in water.
A portion of the former runway system is used by ag pilots in season as well as, occasionally, by both business and recreational aircraft.
The World War II hangers that still loom over the surrounding corn fields have seen modern day service as grain storage buildings and still do, however Fillmore County Historical Society President Doug Rung said much of the corn passes by the hangars and instead goes “across the highway” to the nearby ethanol plant on the west side of Highway 81.
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Information from: York News-Times, https://www.yorknewstimes.com
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