Doctor Roper and the Forgotten Airport of Pickens County

For Our Defense

Aerial of the Jasper Airport built in December 1941, less than three weeks after Pearl Harbor (photo by J.H. Dilbeck)

In December 1942, not even a month had passed since the horrendous attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, when a group of men from Pickens County leased a section of land about three quarters of a mile north of town on the east side of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. Their purpose? To build Pickens County's first airport as a defensive infrastructure for the area.

Led by Dr. J.C. Roper, revenue agent Duff L. Floyd, Dr. J.S. Darnell, Pickens Progress Editor Robert M. Edge, State Legislator Roscoe Pickett, and local oil man J. Selvey Jones, the men leased the land for the construction of a T-shaped runway made of a 2,000 foot long runway, bisected by another 1,600 foot long runway, and built a hangar to house six aircraft.

Dr. Roper first learned to fly in March of 1941. Later after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he convinced several other men to help finance and build the airport. At the time, the airport was considered one of the most modern in North Georgia. His wife was the airport manager.

By Car, Horseback and Plane?

Back in the 40's it was fairly common for doctors to make house calls - and usually by car. But Dr. Roper had more unconventional tools in his arsenal. On occasion, Dr. Roper would fly to his patients when emergency circumstances demanded it. For example, once he had a patient with pneumonia who lived 50 miles away that needed immediate attention. Traveling to the patient by car would have taken him two hours too long. So the doctor flew to the patient, landed in a nearby pea field, administered medicine, and returned to Jasper within 65 minutes. Sometimes he would even travel by horseback to patients who lived in the mountains whose properties were inaccessible by car or plane. Dr. Roper was a remarkable man.

The 1945 aerial shot of the airport

The Plane Crash of November

In November of 1942 Duff L. Floyd was flying with J. Selvy Jones as his passenger over Adairsville when he flew too low over his wife's house. Duff tried to avoid crashing when the plane refused to lift fast enough and they hit the ground hard. Both men smashed into the windshield of the plane and were severely injured. Duff lost an eye and J. Selvy sustained a broken jaw and lost several teeth.

Duff Floyd in Later Years

Duff Floyd in his later years

Duff served in a revenue agent capacity for 35 years and lived and died in Jasper. And although he crashed his plane, in the over 100 car chases engaged in, he never once wrecked a government car.

Within a decade, the airport was closed and a new airport had opened in the county near Refuge Road. In 1981, Mayor Lee Newton arranged for the purchase of 130 acres for the Jasper Industrial Park. Today the remnants of the airport and airfield are beneath the buildings and roads of the Jasper Industrial Park off of Pioneer Industrial Boulevard and Don Westbrook Ave South.

Area of the old Jasper airport