14 DAY TRIAL // Spruce Creek Community, in Northeast Florida, is a gated enclave and residential airpark development, which surrounds a great private airport on all sides. Located a few miles south of Daytona Beach, the Spruce Creek Fly-in Community is one of the most peculiar and unique communities in the world as it is actually a residential airpark.
With little over 5,000 residents, this special community comprises 1,300 homes and 700 hangars. This means an impressive number of the residents own an aircraft. Interestingly, most people here have a hangar attached to their houses instead of a garage, and they all enjoy free access to the airport's single remaining operational runway directly from the driveway of their homes.
With a 4,000-by-150-foot (1,219-by-45-meter) lighted runway and a GPS approach, the private airport at the center of the community can accommodate anything from a Stearman to a Gulfstream.
Currently, there are 438 aircrafts based at this airport, 67% of which are single-engine and 31% multi-engine. Jets and helicopters are also hosted in there. According to Amusing Planet, the amazing collection of aircrafts stored at Spruce Creek’s airport includes Cessnas and Pipers, an Eclipse 500, a P-51 Mustang, several L-39 Albatros, and even one Russian MiG-15 fighter jet.
So, it's no wonder that in this fascinating place even roads double as taxiways, and airplanes are a common view in traffic, alongside bikes, gold carts, and cars.
During World War II, the airport served as a navy airfield – an outpost for Daytona and Deland Naval Air Stations, and had four paved 4,000 foot (1,219-meter) runways, but was abandoned by the army in 1946, and now only one of the runways is still operational.
Not all residents of Spruce Creek are professional pilots, as there are also doctors, businessmen and lawyers among them, but all these people, without exception, are fascinated with aviation. Every Saturday, some of them would fly to one of the local airports for breakfast, a habit which turned into a tradition they call the Saturday Morning Gaggle.
Spruce Creek has one single restaurant and bar, called Downwind Café, situated at the intersection of two major taxiways, and as you probably guessed, it's decorated with lots of kitschy aviation memorabilia.
And given that aviation is an expensive hobby, it's obvious that the majority of the community's residents are wealthy people. Current home prices in the area vary from $165,000 (€119,000) for a condo to several million dollars for hangar mansions. But, for those who love airplanes, Spruce Creek is definitely a paradise.