This week’s highlighted Web site is not directly related to cars, but there are a bunch of reasons to dig it, anyway. The site www.airfields-freeman.com includes the histories of 1,413 abandoned or forgotten airfields in all 50 states. It’s super bitchin’.

Part of the reason this site matters to me is that aircraft are motorized and loud and fast, so they have close relations to hot rodding. The airfields whose stories are told in the site are more often than not tied to the era of the ’30s-’40s, the birthtime of hot rodding, and the images remind me of the same great men who formed our hobby. In many cases, these airfields were even used by hot rodders as dragstrips, either impromptu or organized, and those details are noted on the site.

Aside from the love of history that draws me to www.airfields-freeman.com, it also holds contemporary use, as I’ve used the site to map destinations for some four-wheeling trips as friends and I have sought out remnants of the more far-flung sites. Some of the landing strips highlighted within still have enough pavement on them that an enterprising hot rodder could locate them and start up a flashlight-drags event or even a standing-mile speed event with the help of local authorities.

Lastly, this site represents the exact format that could be used to start a site for abandonded dragstrips nationwide. Someone get on that, would you?

If you like the abandoned airfields site, drop the guy a few bucks as a donation.

The photo shows Howard Hughes landing his expermental at Glendale, California’s Grand Central Air Terminal.