Cape airport removes tower, beacon with ties to the airfield's storied past

A visible link to the Cape Girardeau Regional Airport's storied past came down Wednesday with the removal of a beacon tower dating back to the 1940s, according to airport officials.

The metal tower and its large, rotating beacon were removed by crews with Reinhold Electric as part of an airport improvement project. The beacon and tower, which stood 50 feet high, are being replaced with a pole and a smaller, rotating beacon, said airport manager Bruce Loy.

Unlike the tower, the pole will be able to be lowered when necessary for maintenance and repairs of the new beacon, Loy said.

Plans for the tower began in 1948 and the tower was installed in July 1949, according to Southeast Missourian archives. The removed beacon was not the original beacon, but is worth preserving, according to Loy. He said the removed beacon is old, but he doesn't know how old.

Loy said he wants to publicly display the beacon and possibly the platform on which it sat. Where it might be displayed at the airport has not been determined, he said.

If just the beacon is preserved, it might be displayed in the airport terminal, said Loy. If remounted on the metal platform, it would be too large to display inside the terminal, said Loy.

The airport manager said light from the rotating beacon serves as a visual aid for pilots during bad weather and at night. Federal regulations require the airport to have a beacon, officials said.

The new beacon and pole are part of the runway lighting project approved by the Cape Girardeau City Council.

According to council agenda records, the entire project is expected to cost more than $807,000, most of it federal dollars awarded by the Missouri Department of Transportation. The total includes design costs as well as construction services.

Reinhold Electric submitted the construction low bid of $631,564. After some changes to the project, the final price for construction and construction oversight services came in at just over $683,000, city records show.

Loy said the old runway lighting needed to be replaced. It was originally installed in the early 1970s. "While some of the cabling and transformers have been updated, the current light fixtures are no longer manufactured, which was forcing the airport to depend on other airport surplus fixtures for repairs and maintenance," he wrote in a February report to the council.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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