NPS Wants to Wipe out Airport To Provide Area For Night Stargazing (!?)

We couldn't make this up if we tried... but a unique GA airport (Stovepipe Wells) in the middle of historic Death Valley is under attack by some folks at the National Park Service, under the direction of Superintendent Mike Reynolds of the Death Valley National Park, because they want to turn it into a locale for star gazing...

A tweet by the San Carlos Airport Association (@KSQL_Assoc) alerted us to this bizarre state of affairs with a call for action by 23 December (two days from now, folks... get busy).

NPS has specifically put forward questions about the removal of the airstrip to create a night-sky viewing area... as if the current airport location was the only place one could look at the sky...

The idiocy of this idea is obvious... as it destroys one of the few remaining GA airports in the area... a unique location to say the least, in favor of a scatter-brained concept that could be accomplished virtually anywhere else. An excuse to simply dispense with an airport by folks without a shred of aviation interest, perhaps? Possibly... but there is little reason to destroy such an asset when there are precious few airports in the area, and of the few that remain, one of the closest is in sad shape.

ANN urges pilots to respond to this anti-aviation proposal as strongly as possible via the web process below.

FMI: https://parkplanning.nps.gov/StovepipeWellsPlan