Larry and Penny Park's WWII Air Station Arrow
Miami-Dade County, Miami-Dade County, Florida
Marker Inscription
Larry and Penny Park was originally a piece of the Naval Air Station in 1942. The base was destroyed due to a hurricane in 1945. Huge concrete arrow on the ground points north for planes to land. It adds an historical aspect to our modern day park.
The Story
During World War II the U.S. Navy blanketed South Florida with air stations to train pilots for the war in the Atlantic and Pacific, and this parkland began life as part of one of them in 1942. A 1945 hurricane wrecked the base, but a huge concrete directional arrow — pointing north to guide aircraft — still survives on the ground. Such arrows were part of early aviation's navigation network, later repurposed and remembered as relics of the flying age.
Why it matters
It preserves a tangible trace of the wartime aviation buildup that transformed Florida into a national training ground and helped define the early era of powered flight.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When the United States entered World War II, South Florida became one of the country's great training grounds. Its flat land, clear skies, warm weather, and long coastline made it close to ideal for teaching thousands of young Americans to fly. The military moved in fast, building and expanding air stations across the region almost overnight.
This parkland began that life in 1942 as part of a Naval Air Station. In those years the sky over South Florida hummed with training flights — pilots learning to take off, navigate, and land before being sent on to the wider war in the Atlantic and Pacific. What is now green space for families was once a working piece of that wartime machine.
Florida's hurricane seasons, though, answer to no war effort. In 1945 a hurricane wrecked the base — a reminder that the same coastline that made the region perfect for flying also left it exposed to the full force of the tropics.
People & events
The story here is less about a single person than about a place and the war that shaped it. In 1942 this ground was folded into a Naval Air Station, part of the enormous buildup that turned quiet stretches of Florida into busy centers of military aviation.
Then came 1945 and the hurricane that destroyed the base. Storms like that could flatten hangars, tear up runways, and end an installation's usefulness in a matter of hours. When the war ended and the base did not return, the land eventually found new life as a public park.
The most striking survivor is the huge concrete arrow set into the ground, pointing north to guide aircraft. Directional arrows were part of early aviation's navigation toolkit, laid out to help pilots orient themselves and find their way in an age before the dense electronic guidance we take for granted. This one outlasted the base it served, and now sits quietly among the ordinary business of a modern park.
Its place in the American story
The wartime aviation buildup transformed Florida, and Florida in turn helped transform American airpower. The pilots trained in places like this fed into a national effort of staggering scale — a country learning, almost from scratch, to field air forces across two oceans at once.
That effort left physical traces all over the American landscape: airfields that became civilian airports, arrows and beacons that once knit the sky together, concrete foundations reclaimed by grass. This surviving arrow is one such trace, a tangible link to the early era of powered flight and the moment a nation bet heavily on the airplane.
There is something quietly powerful in a war relic that now sits inside a family park. It marks how quickly the extraordinary can become ordinary — how a place built for war can be handed back to peace, with just enough of the old purpose left visible to remember it by.
If you visit
The thing to seek out here is the arrow itself. Look down, not up: it's set into the ground, a large concrete marker pointing north, and once you know its purpose it turns an ordinary walk into a small encounter with aviation history.
Let yourself imagine the setting as it once was — hangars, aircraft, the noise and urgency of a base at war — laid over the calm of a park today. That contrast is the whole appeal. You're standing where pilots once trained, in a spot now given over to everyday recreation.
If you're building a South Florida road trip, a stop like this rewards the curious traveler who likes history hiding in plain sight. It doesn't take long, and it leaves you looking at the region's parks and airfields a little differently — wondering what else from the flying age is still down there, underfoot.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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