Three orange-and-white Jayhawks, five lakes, and 1,500 miles of international border
Cherry Capital Airport (KTVC) was a Naval Air Facility during World War II. When the war ended in 1945, the Coast Guard inherited the field and on November 15 of that year stood up Air Station Traverse City — initially a single-plane detachment to provide search and rescue across the entire Great Lakes. It was formally commissioned in 1946 and has been working ever since. The math is staggering when you see it from a pilot's seat: this one base — and its sister station in Detroit — is responsible for 1,500 miles of international border with Canada and a search-and-rescue area covering all of Lake Michigan, all of Lake Superior, and most of Lake Huron. To put that in scale, the center of Lake Superior is 185 miles from the ramp; the eastern edge of Lake Ontario is 450 miles. Today, three Sikorsky MH-60T Jayhawk helicopters (a Coast Guard variant of the Army's Black Hawk) sit in a 50,000 square-foot hangar on the south side of the field. The crews — 13 pilots and roughly 110 enlisted — keep a 30-minute alert posture year-round. They have hoisted ice fishermen off drifting Green Bay floes, plucked kayakers off Lake Michigan in storms, evacuated injured Mackinac Island residents in winter when the bridge ice closes the road, and serviced the most remote lighthouses in the country including Stannard Rock — North America's loneliest lighthouse, accessible only by hoist. When you fly into Cherry Capital for the National Cherry Festival airshow in July, the Blue Angels will be roaring overhead. The orange-and-white Jayhawks parked next to the cherries are why everyone goes home.