The Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport seems regular in every way, except for two graves beneath runway 10. The airport in Georgia, USA, was built on a former farm. It had once belonged to Catherine and Richard Dotson who were laid to rest on their land. Today, their names are engraved on the tarmac, forever remembered by people flying overhead.

Who was the Dotson Family?

The Dotsons were farming pioneers and landowners. Richard and Catherine were both born in 1779, and were married for 50 years. During that time, the land was known as Cherokee Hills. Catherine died in 1877, and Richard followed only seven years later. When they passed, they were buried in the family cemetery that included at least 100 graves. According to Bonaventure Storyist Shannon Scott, the graves include slaves and former property workers.

Turning the Farm into Savannah Airport

In 1942, the City of Savannah and the federal government negotiated a lease with the Dotson descendants to expand operations for the U.S. War Department. “Shortly after its acquisition, the federal government began a program of obtaining additional acreage to enlarge the facilities at Chatham Field, which had been designated as a command base and heavy bombardment combat crew training station for the second bomb wing of the Army Air Corps,” said officials from the Savannah/Hilton Airport. In other words, the military needed an airport to land its B-24 “Liberators” and B-17 “Flying Fortresses” with the approach of World War II.

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Transferring over 100 Graves

The descendants of the Dotsons negotiated a deal to relocate all but four of the graves to Bonaventure Cemetery. Meanwhile, Richard and Catherine remained “in and next to the airport’s most active runway,” according to airport officials, “These grave sites are the only ones in the world embedded in an active 9,350-foot runway serving thousands of general and commercial aviation operations yearly.” 

Two More Graves

Two other graves stayed, those of their relatives John Dotson and Daniel Hueston, who are located in the shrub not far from the busy runway. The descendants had refused to allow those graves to be transferred. As the matriarch and patriarch of their family, Richard and Catherine would have wished to remain in the land they had worked on for most of their lives.