History
The Michigan State Police (MSP, not to be confused with the Michigan State University Police), were established by the Michigan legislature in 1919 to investigate crime and enforce state law across county boundaries. The state troopers, as they came to be known, originated as a wartime protective force in 1917, created to fill the gap left by Michigan National Guard troops who had been federalized for the war effort. A main headquarters and barracks were established on Harrison Road on property loaned by Michigan Agricultural College (which became Michigan State College in 1925, and then Michigan State University in 1955). By mid-1919, a force of two hundred horse-mounted troopers was commanded by Colonel Roy C. Vandercook, a veteran of the Spanish-American war.
One of Col. Vandercook's early recruits was Oscar G. Olander, a quiet, educated, but tenacious man who won a football letter before leaving Ferris Institute for the MSP in 1919. Starting as a corporal, Olander would rise quickly through the ranks to become Captain and Deputy Commissioner by 1923. In 1926, at the age of 26, he became Commissioner, a position he held until his retirement in 1947. (He had a year earlier been sent by Douglas McArthur to Japan to reorganize the post-war police system there.) In his 1985 masters thesis, The School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University, Wilbur Lewis Rykert states:
The development of the MSP during this period is the story of the personal leadership of Commissioner Oscar Olander. He took a "rag tag" group of stout hearted men and guided them into a modern police organization of high international standing. From 1923 to 1947, the name Olander meant the Michigan State Police.
Although they began as a horse-mounted corps, MSP were quick to adopt motorized transportation and other modern technologies, such as short-wave radio, which they used to communicate with vehicles state-wide, both terrestrial and airborne. Interest in "airships" started early, and grew until 1927, when the use of airplanes by MSP was formalized. In his 1942 book, Michigan State Police, a Twenty-Five Year History, Commissioner Olander writes, "For the first time, the airplane came into the police picture in Michigan when arrangements were made with Major Thomas G. Lamphier, commandant at the federal flying field at Selfridge, for us [sic] of ships in police emergencies." (Selfridge Michigan Air National Guard Base remains in active use, and is one of the oldest military fields in the country, serving continuously since 1917.)
Interest in aviation was clearly in the minds of the MSP when Charles Edward Ash and Loren Wesley Jenkins submitted their undergraduate thesis, Design of Michigan State Police Airport, to the Department of Civil Engineering at Michigan State College in 1930. The thesis contains a letter of support by Commissioner Olander, which states:
The Plans for a State Police Airport, submitted by Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Ash, meet entirely with the approval of the Department of Public Safety.
The site selected is ideally located with references to our Headquarters Detachment at East Lansing and this matter has been placed before the State Board of Agriculture.
A landing field of the present design is fully capable of serving the present need of the Michigan State Police. Moreover the design recommends itself by the fact that the designers have arranged the runways in such a manner that further development and enlargement would be made easy should the demand for greater facilities arise in the future.
This was an exciting time for the MSP. A handsome new brick headquarters building (Mapes Hall, named for Trooper Samuel A. Mapes, who was killed in action by bootleggers in 1927) had just opened in 1929, replacing the rickety wooden structures. Radio and Administration buildings soon followed, and eventually the MSP campus comprised numerous buildings, including modern police laboratories. The MSP eventually moved into a new complex in Dimondale, and into a new headquarters building in downtown Lansing in 2010, and left the disposition of the old MSP campus buildings to Michigan State University. Sadly, the University could find no use for them, and demolished them in 2012, replacing them with a parking ramp. Many of us old-timers, who have spent long years on the MSU campus, remember these beautiful buildings fondly.
Interest in aviation continued in strong force, although the airport proposed by Ash and Jenkins was never built. The MSP recognized that airplanes could be very useful in the control of road traffic during large events, and in 1939 they were used for the first time over Ann Arbor by the MSP to relieve congestion after University of Michigan Football games (which already drew upwards of 75,000 fans.) That same year the Michigan State Police Aviation Unit was established under Commissioner Olander. The Unit continues to operate out of Lansing Capital City International Airport (KLAN). According to the MSP webpage, the Unit consists of "...five full-time pilots and two full-time tactical flight officers (TFOs), multiple part-time TFOs, two full-time civilian mechanics, and one full-time civilian scheduler..." and with aircraft types including "... a Beechcraft King Air 90, Cessna 182R and T206H, Bell 206L3, 407GX, and UH-1H, and several types of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs)."
The Airport - as proposed and constructed
Ash and Jenkins proposed a spot on the MSC campus just southeast of the then new MSP headquarters building, and to the south of Macklin Field, which would become Spartan Stadium in 1957. This area, on the east side of Harrison Road, was primarily farm fields in 1930, with few structures. The 1930 campus map shows that Shaw Lane had not yet been been constructed, and the area was an ideal site for future expansion of the proposed airport. By 1931 Shaw Lane was in place, and, if built, the airport would need to be south of that road. An aerial photograph from 1939 shows that the area was still farm fields, and still formed a fine site for the airport. However, the opportunity soon evaporated. WWII brought rapid changes to the MSU campus. A large number of Quonset huts were built on the site to hold the huge number of students returning from the war, who were wanting to take advantage of the GI Bill. The 1947 campus map shows the entire proposed airport area filled with Quonset huts. (The last Quonset hut wasn't demolished until 1989, to make way for the new Breslin Center basketball arena. My wife spent her first year living in one of the huts while her father, a returning veteran of the Korean War, was an undergraduate student at MSU.) Between 1962 and 1966, four large dormitories - Case, Holden, Wilson, and Wonders Halls - were built to replace the Quonset huts, forming the South Residential Neighborhood area.
I decided to build Olander Field (as Ash and Jenkins called it) as close to the original proposed design as possible. The design called for four paved, intersecting runways, three of length 1320 feet and one of 1540 feet, each with width of 100 feet. None of the runway designs included taxiways, so be prepared to back-taxi to your desired takeoff location. Although Ash and Jenkins recognized the need for future expansion, suggesting that two of the runways could be extended to 3500 feet, and two to 2700 feet, I thought it would be most interesting to keep the runways as originally designed. I have also implemented their call for a single hangar, along with a fire station. They saw no need for an administration building, since the new MSP headquarters was just across the street. I did decide to keep Shaw Lane intact, and build the airport just to the south (where the South Neighborhood currently resides), since the road was constructed just after the thesis was submitted. And I decided to add the smallest bit of modernization by including a fueling station and helipad. There is a static Bell 407 on the helipad, decked out in MSP blue, although without markings. I also added Unicom on 122.7 MHz, and AWOS on 119.125.
The airport as constructed provides a great opportunity for practicing short takeoff and landing procedures, with numerous obstacles including trees, light poles, buildings, a stadium, a basketball arena, and a large water tower. Also, some of the runways are a bit rough, so expect some dips and broken pavement. Several spots have been patched, but it's best to avoid the patches. The good news is that with so many intersecting runways, proper selection will result in a cross-wind angle of no more than 22.5 degrees.
The proximity to the MSU campus allows for some awesome approaches over the obstacles mentioned above! My favorites, in order of pucker factor, are:
RW 23 -- approach at eye level with Spartan Stadium
RW 18 -- fly just over the top of the Breslin Center Annex
RW 32 -- sneak over the top of the water tower, then drop in
RW 09 -- be sure to stay above the light poles
RW 27 -- come in just over the top of the Engineering Building (my old haunt)
There's much entertainment to be had just flying from runway to runway!
Notes:
To install the airport, just unzip and place the folder titled "mulberrywing-airport-kogo-olander-field" in your community folder.
This airport works in conjunction with historic KMSU -- the Michigan State University Landing Strip (download here). You can fly from Olander Field to the landing strip in less than a minute! It also works well with fictional KMSC -- Glenn A. Rushman Airfield, another design by an MSC undergraduate student (download here), located just a couple of miles to the north in East Lansing.
The helipad has a static helicopter. Let me know if you want me to remove it to allow you to land your own helicopter. You could also land in the grass nearby.
Updates:
Version 1.1
1. Added signage: entrance sign, perimeter warning signs, hangar markings (see new photos)
2. Added and rearranged items inside the hangar (see new photo)
3. Cleaned up some items
4. Compiled for SU 12
5. Please delete the old package folder from your community folder and replace with the new folder