Government Field/Dayton in Flags in the Dust (Location)

The Wright Brothers were from Dayton, Ohio, so the city's connection to flight has a Faulknerian pedigree. The only detail the novel provides about the airfield from which Young Bayard lauches himself into the sky for the last time is that it has a paved runway, a "tarmac" (389). Faulkner is, however, presumably thinking of North Field, built just north of Dayton for Orville Wright's airplane factory, and leased to the U.S. Army in 1917.