Lunken Airport, Cincinnati, Ohio

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Cincinnati Municipal Airport (Lunken Airport) was Cincinnati's main airport until 1947. It is in the Little Miami River valley near Columbia, the site of the first Cincinnati-area settlement in 1788. When the 1,000-acre airfield opened in 1925 it was the largest municipal airfield in the world. The airport was named for industrialist Edmund H. Lunken, who ran the Lunkenheimer Valve Company.

Lunken Airport was supplanted by the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport after flooding from the Ohio River and introduction of larger aircraft that needed longer runways. The flooding prompted the airport's nickname of "Sunken Lunken". During the Ohio River flood of 1937, the airfield and two-story main terminal building at the southwest corner of the airport were submerged, except for the third-floor air traffic control "tower". A plaque (which appears from ground level to be a single black brick) on the terminal building, facing the airfield, indicates the high-water mark.

Today the old control tower is home to the Lunken Cadet Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol, and is the oldest standing control tower in the United States.

GPS Location: 39°06'13.9"N 84°25'46.8"W