I was just staring at this old airway strip chart on the wall of my office and noticed several dry lakes listed as "marked auxiliary landing fields". Just wondering if anyone any the area regularly visits these places and is there any signs of ever having been marked on the ground?

The sites are Troy Lake, Coyote Lake, and Soda Lake. They are all in the Barstow area. There was one other unmarked lake used as an aux. field just west of Ludlow but it's in a Restricted area. Oh, and one other, Lucerne Lake just east over the hill from Apple Valley.

http://skyvector.com/?ll=35.03164564345 ... 301&zoom=2

The 717th Medical Detachment performed two medical evacuation missions for large Army exercises at Ft. Irwin while I was with them: Brave Shield 79 and Golden Eagle 82. Air Force C-130s practiced low level, high threat operations using those sand runways with perforated steel plank (PSP) surfaces. I expect they continue to use them in the large training exercises out there. All the flying I did there was inside the restricted area except on backhauls to Loma Linda Hospital for burn patents and March AFB for all others. All were initially med-evaced to an Army Reserve jet pack blowup Combat Support Hospital near Ft. Irwin by "First UP" on deck and "Second Up" sleeping fully clothed. Our "Third Up" huey would then backhaul them once stabalized.

To get to Loma Linda, we first shot the ILS or PAR at Norton AFB and then did a scud run on over to the civilian hospital. An interesting thing happened on the way to Loma Linda my first time in. The lady on their FM Radio told me to land on the thirteenth floor of the sixteen floor hospital. I told her I was good but didn't like to fly in windows. She got flustered and just kept repeating to land on the thirteenth floor. Simple enough when we got there, it was a stair step building.

A bunch of us landed gliders on Troy Lake in 1987 while flying in a competition. There was no runway marking, PSP, or anything like that anywhere I saw. I've been to Broadwell Lake north of Ludlow many years ago by car, nothing there but an abandoned raised railroad berm.

The East and West Superior dry lakes northwest of Barstow were desolate and billiard table smooth, but again that was 1986 or 87. Just to the north of the Superior dry Lakes is a place I call Phantom Acres, a full size dirt replica of a forward airbase, complete with a long dirt runway and several F-4 carcasses. Part of the China Lake NWC practice and testing area.

I believe Lil' John and the guys from Riverside and Corona fly up to Coyote Lake often... I drove there 15 years ago and did not see any runway markings of any sort. Maybe they know something about that lake being listed as an aux landing field.

Harper Dry Lake west of Barstow was the scene of a nightmare glider retrieve circa 1988, several of us had to go out and find an infamous local Hungarian/American glider icon who landed there with a student, we sank the van up to the axles in mud, spent a cold night digging, etc.

My point in all this was that in all my time stomping around those dry lakes, I never saw any runways, markings, or other evidence of their being "official" airports, save for a couple of exceptions: Rogers Dry Lake and Rosamond Dry Lake are marked as runways and are of course part of the Edwards AFB facility. Giant Rock Dry Lake was on the sectionals years ago, and even had a fly-in café built under a... giant rock. During the X-15 program, several remote Nevada and California dry lakes were scouted and approved as alternate landing areas, but I have no idea if they were actually marked up with black lines like Edwards is. And Groom Dry Lake, well I heard rumors there are a couple of pretty long lines marking a runway adjacent to a non-existent facility on the edge of the lakebed.

I have no doubt that some of the lakes were listed as aux landing fields on the old mail routes and airway system, but I've never heard or seen anything about them having been marked with runways, or windsocks, etc. There's a windsock on El Mirage lake, but it's next to the wreckage of a small cabin cruiser boat... maybe it was a seaplane base in the Pleistocene era

Yeah I guess any markings that would have been around in the 20's and 30's wouldn't have survived this long. That old airmail stuff just fascinates me though. I'm going to start looking up more of the aux landing sites and see if any of them are still "backcountry" usable.

Most of the airfields of the 20s were just that--fields. They didn't have runways in many places, and that allowed the airplanes to land into the wind, no matter which way it was blowing. So I wouldn't expect runway markings.

Cary

Yeah, that's what I figured too. The legend on the airway chart is what made me wonder if there was some sort of markings at one time. They are depicted as "Marked Auxiliary Fields" Still even if there ever was a marking, it's been close to 100 years.

This is the chart I was looking at...