The unsettling reason this busy airport has a graveyard built into its runway

Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport. Photo / Getty Images
There are many things that might cross your mind while speeding down the runway immediately before your plane takes off – your impending holiday; woes regarding what you have or haven’t packed; how long until they run lunch service.
It’s unlikely you’ll be wondering if the plane’s tyres are currently hurtling across a couple of 150-year-old graves.
However, at the Savannah Hilton Head airport in Georgia, USA, that’s exactly what occurs hundreds of time every day.
According to Lad Bible, at “the edge of runway 10 and 28, there are two graves” which are embedded into the tarmac.
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Lying side by side, the rectangular-shaped tombs commemorate a couple named Catherine and Richard Dotson, both born in 1779, later passing away in 1877 and 1884 respectively.
Long before the airport existed, the Dotsons farmed the local land, then known as Cherokee Hills. When they died. as was standard during the time, the husband and wife were buried on their land together.
Lad Bible reports that the “area was actually the family cemetery on their farm, which held around 100 graves, which unfortunately also included the graves of slaves.”
The airport’s website states that two additional graves for Daniel Hueston and John Dotson – relatives of Catherine and Richard – are also located in the shrub not far from the airport’s busiest runway.
As for Catherine and Richard, they lie almost directly beneath the airport’s main airstrip, of which there are an average of 309 planes taking off per day.
However, Savannah Airport wasn’t always a busy flight hub. In fact, the land lay relatively undisturbed until 1942.
With the threat of World World II looming, the US military was forced to find a suitable place to expand its wartime facilities and landing space for certain warplanes.
According to Savannah Airport’s website, “a lease was negotiated between the Federal Government and the City of Savannah for 1100 acres, at what is now Savannah/Hilton Head International.”
Much of this area fell right on top of the Dotson family cemetery.
While it’s believed the majority of the graves were moved to an alternative resting place at Bonaventure Cemetary, Catherine and Richard stayed put.
Lad Bible details the Dotsons’ descendants’ reluctance for the couple’s graves to be moved, instead requesting their original burial ground remain in place.
Consequently, the graves were paved over and became a key feature of the runway, complete with in-built plaques – much akin to a regular gravestone – to signify those buried beneath.
Which is where they stayed long after the end of World War II; frozen in time while the airport expanded and evolved around them.
Along with relatives Daniel Hueston and John Dotson, Savannah Airport’s website states that the original landowners “remain undisturbed in and next to the airport’s most active runway.”
They are the only grave sites in the world to be embedded in an active runway of this scale and size for commercial (and general) flights.
Whether you agree that they have been left undisturbed for the past 82 years is up for debate.