Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 162, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1917 — From Farm to Aviation Field. [ARTICLE]

From Farm to Aviation Field.

Five weeks ago three sets of farm buildings and growing grain occupied a 640 acre tract just outside the limits of Rantoul, ML Today student aviators are trundling over it in practice machines, expert airmen are sailing overhead and an army of carpenters, plumbers, electricians and other skilled workmen are rushing final touches to fifty-one structures which have sprung up as if by magic. Farm buildings, hedges, orchards, fences and growing crops have disappeared, and 250 teams, dragging scrapers, are rapidly ironing the natural undulations down to the flatness of the proverbial billiard table. , Even the names by which the tract was known have vanished. One no longer hears of “the old Jones place,” or “the Smith farm.’” The ground has been christened “Chanute Field,” in honor of Octave Chanute, of Chicago, the famous French-American engineer whose research studies in aviation still form the basis of so much of the text book instruction in the science.