The Runway on the Ridge

Runway at Wendell H. Ford Airport. Photo by Moto Mojo

Long before the Wendell H. Ford Airport was carved into the ridges of Perry County, the mountaintop was known to locals as The Shelf. Hunters spoke of the way storms would gather there first, as if the sky tested its fury against the plateau before spilling down into the valleys. When coal was king and the hollow towns thrived, the mountaintop was nothing but scrub pine and wind—too high for farming, too exposed for settlement.

In the late 1970s, as Hazard searched for ways to pull itself out of coal’s decline, county leaders fixed their eyes on The Shelf. Engineers dynamited and leveled, bringing flat order to the mountain’s back. By 1983, what had been wilderness became an asphalt strip gleaming under the Appalachian sun: the Wendell H. Ford Airport. They named it for the state’s governor, but in Hazard the old name lingered—The Shelf.

Pilots soon learned that flying into Hazard was not for the faint of heart. Weather rolled in quick, sweeping across Black Gold Country with sudden gusts and curtains of rain. The longer runway gave comfort, but the smaller one was a test of nerve: drop-offs at either end, darkness pooling in the valleys below. Old men swore that on stormy nights, you could hear the whistle of phantom winds where the mountain used to stand, reminding all who landed that nature had not surrendered, only shifted.

Today, the airport is a gateway for those who would come and go from Hazard. Yet it remains a place of thresholds—a strip of human certainty cut into wild ridges, where every takeoff and landing feels a little like daring the mountain to let you pass.