Times of the Islands Spring 2021

This photograph shows Junior Rigby with the heavy equipment used to clear the “new airport” in 1967.
the National Park is today. The bow ramp was lowered
onto the beach and Provident’s brand new Caterpillar D8 people in government in those days. We were mostly
Walkin May2017_Layout 1 5/28/17 5:45 PM Page 1
tractor crawled ashore with Billy Dodson at the controls. dealing with the Administrator Tony Golding, Magistrate
Fritz had hired Billy to head up Provident’s heavy equipment
division.
Once the D8 was ashore, it could drag the rest of the
load onto the beach, even if some of it got stuck in the
loose sand. With the D8, a grader and a roller available it
was time to start improving the airstrip. Billy, with Fritz
riding on the armrest, headed west through the bushes
with the D8 and made a narrow track all the way down to
the airstrip.
While this was going on I was still in Sweden finishing
off the topographic map that was needed to properly
plan our road system and subdivisions. Only part of that
original track became part of the final road system, but
it served the purpose of getting the equipment to the
airstrip. Billy very quickly added 500 feet to the east,
which brought the eastern end of the runway closer to
what today is Walkin Marine. With the grader and roller
he created an even, compacted surface—1,200 feet and
no loose rocks, luxury!
Part of the agreement with government was that
Provident construct a 4,500 foot runway with a coral surface
and the location should be outside the 4,000 acres
that was to be developed by Provident. Since we now had
the equipment, we wanted to get going on fulfilling our
obligations, so we asked the TCI Government where they
wanted us to build the runway. There weren’t that many
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