Dexter Florence Field

Dexter B. Florence Memorial Field is an airport constructed in 1957 with support from the City of Arkadelphia, Clark County, and federal grants. Henderson operated the airport under a lease agreement with the city from the mid-1990s until 2016, when management of the airport returned to the city.

The university began offering aviation courses at the airport ROTC students in 1968. In 1974, an aviation degree program housed in the Department of Physics was added to the curriculum. It eventually became its own department and is now housed in the Caplinger Airway Science Center. All flight training continues to take place at the airport.

The airport includes a single asphalt 5,000-foot runway and a full-length parallel taxiway. Both conventional and T-hangars are offered at the airport, along with self-service fuel. Some administrative and teaching spaces for the Henderson Aviation program are also housed at the airport, as well as the fleet of university-owned planes. The field does not offer any commercial flights but does support crop dusting and timber-related flights.

First Lieutenant Dexter B. Florence was a 1970 graduate of Henderson. He was mortally wounded while flying a helicopter in Vietnam and died in Japan on October 29, 1972. The airport was renamed in his honor in 1997.