Lake Hood Seaplane base
A busy place to get breakfast
The Flying Machine Restaurant does a brisk business on gorgeous blue-sky days in Anchorage. Located on Lake Spenard—the adjacent lake to Lake Hood, the world’s busiest seaplane base—the restaurant and companion Fancy Moose Lodge and The Deck at Lake Hood celebrate Alaska’s rich aviation history and offer lakeside Alaskan bliss.
Watch the nearly 200 floatplane landings per day in the summer from either the lakeside deck or the floor-to-ceiling windowed space. A restaurant has stood alongside the seaplane base since 1972. Now it is a part of the Millenium Hotel chain here. Floatplanes were critical to the establishment of Anchorage and development in Alaska. Anchorage was established as a tent city in 1915, supporting the building of the railroad here. Lake Spenard was established as a floatplane base in 1920, but it was deemed too small until a canal was dredged between Spenard and Hood in 1938. Ironically, Lake Spenard and the street and area are named for a bootlegger, Joe Spenard, who only lived in Alaska for less than two years in the early 1920s. The two connected lakes were established as a seaplane base in 1940. When Anchorage International Airport (ANC) opened in 1951, the control tower at Lake Hood was decommissioned, and air traffic control for the seaplane base is manned by ANC. There are three seaplane landing areas and one 2,200-foot-long gravel runway.
Related Articles
