Goodyear’s property at Wingfoot Lake, in the countryside a few miles southeast of Akron, is the company’s primary field test site for airships, and has been for more than a century. In 1916 Goodyear bought the 720-acre site, surrounding an artificial lake that was renamed Wingfoot Lake, to reference the corporate logo, Mercury’s winged foot. The first series of airships ordered by the Navy, the B series, was made at Wingfoot Lake in 1917. Since then, Goodyear has erected around 350 airships overall (239 of which were erected at Wingfoot Lake). During WWI, the Navy took over Wingfoot Lake as its Naval Airship Training Station, while Goodyear produced more Navy airships, including the C series, which were deployed to coastal bases, like Rockaway Beach in New York City. By the time the war ended and the Navy left, Wingfoot Lake had 26 buildings. In 1930 it made its first blimp with an illuminated sign, which spelled out “Goodyear” in neon. During the Second World War, more than 100 Navy airships were erected at Wingfoot. The hangar was extended to 800 feet, and many other buildings were constructed on the site. By the mid-1950s, Wingfoot Lake was a diversified aviation and electromagnetic test site, and in 1962 was renamed Wingfoot Lake Test Operations. It tested helicopter armor, cryogenics systems, fuel tanks, underwater acoustics, amphibious aircraft, and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons, and with 17 ranges, was called the “most complete radar testing facility in the USA.” Goodyear restructured its aerospace business in the 1960s, and opened a blimp assembly and maintenance station at Spring, Texas. Wingfoot Lake was put into caretaker status in 1972, and most of the buildings, including three of the four hangars, were torn down. Government and defense work continued at the site; however, including the use of the remaining hangar by the Department of Energy to develop centrifuges for uranium enrichment. Other electromagnetic test structures, including the Underwater Acoustics Test Facility, were used after Goodyear Aerospace was purchased by Loral Defense Systems and Lockheed. In the 2000s, things at Wingfoot Lake again changed dramatically. The north part of the site, which had been used as a corporate retreat and recreation area for Goodyear, was sold to the state to become a wildlife area and public park. Goodyear kept the land on the southern shore of the lake, cleaning it up further, stripping away most of what remained of its industrial and military history, and turning it into a dedicated airship base, once again. In 2011 Goodyear announced that its next generation of blimps would be designed by the Zeppelin Company of Germany (which resurfaced in 1993, after its disappearance in WWII) and assembled at Wingfoot Lake. Since then, three of these 250-foot-long semi-rigid airships have been built. One is now based in California, and one in Florida. The third, named Wingfoot Three, was finished in June 2018, and is based in the revamped hangar at Wingfoot Lake.