Shinn-Woodbridge Airport

Shinn-Woodbridge Airport. . , Transportation has loomed large in the history of Iselin. In pre-Colonial times, the area was crossed with east-west trails used by the Lenni Lenape people journeying between the Hudson and Delaware Rivers. In the 1770s, the corner of Green Street and Chain O’Hills Road hosted a travelers’ inn; starting in 1780, a stage from Elizabeth to Princeton ran through what was called Perrytown and later, Uniontown. In 1836, a train station was built as a stop on the Jersey City-Highland park line, presaging the 1971 opening of Metropark as a regional rail center., In 1872, New York stockbroker and railroad president Adrian Iselin (1818-1905) bought property in Uniontown to establish a private women’s academy, the Adrian Institute, on Bloomfield Avenue. Shortly after, the railroad station serving Uniontown was renamed Iselin., Aviation came to Woodbridge in 1925, when Shinn-Airways, Inc. built Shinn-Woodbridge Airport on 72 acres of Township land on the northeast corner of Oak Tree Road and Wood Avenue. in 1946, ex-Army pilot James Ruscoe bought the field and converted the airport from commercial aviation to serving privately-owned aircraft. Renamed Ruscoe Flying Services, the airport had two paved runways and operated a flying school (“eight airplanes available for flight instruction at $11 an hour”). One of the flight school owners was Bernice “Bee” Haydu, noted World War II WASP aviator (Women Airforce Service Pilot)., The airport closed in 1951 when the land was acquired by developer Lester Robbins and made into the Woodbridge Oaks housing subdivision., More information visit www.wthpc.org , Woodbridge Township Historic Preservation Commission , Mayor John E. McCormac Woodbridge Township 2013 ,