The Pilot's Pilgrimage: How Oshkosh Became the Center of GA

In 1953, an aircraft mechanic named Paul Poberezny gathered a few dozen like-minded amateur airplane builders in his Hales Corners, Wisconsin basement and founded the Experimental Aircraft Association. The annual fly-in started small; Curtiss-Wright Airport in Milwaukee, then Rockford, Illinois, and in 1970 it moved for good to Oshkosh's Wittman Field. The man the field is named for, Steve Wittman, had been air-racing since 1926 and held a pilot license signed by Orville Wright. The convergence was perfect. Today AirVenture brings more than 10,000 aircraft and, in 2026, a record 734,000 people to a town of 66,000 for one week each July; the Wittman tower handles more operations during the week than any tower in the world, about a hundred takeoffs and landings for every hour the field is open. Airplanes stream in low over the Wisconsin farmland and land on painted colored dots, several sharing the runway at once, and the field becomes a city of tents, propellers, and warbirds. The pilgrimage is the point.