Most airports have relatively mundane reasons for why they’re named what they are.
They’re named after the city or county they’re in. They’re named after a person. And sometimes they’re renamed when we decide the original namesake wasn’t so great.
And then there’s Happy Butt
And then you have Happy Butt Airport, which is located 7 miles south of the unincorporated community of Byers, Colorado.
Yes, for real. You’ll see it on aviation maps in Colorado. Located at an elevation of 5,515 feet, the private airport known as Happy Butt has a single, 2,000-foot runway made of natural soil.
Here’s its FAA information.
It’s really named Happy Butt?
Sure is. The land where Happy Butt Airport is located is owned by a pilot named Robert Husted. Y’see, Husted’s mother’s given name was Gladys —but if you said it slowly, it sounded like “glad ass.” And THAT earned her the nickname “Happy Butt.”
From North Denver News:
“She thought it was kind of funny,” Husted reminisced, calling his mom “an old Kansas farm girl.”
Gladys died in 2013 at age 100 and left Robert some money. With it, he bought a Cessna 206, a single-engine prop plane, and named it “Happy Butt” in her honor.
Husted dreamed of living near a landing strip, but fly-in communities (housing developments with hangars and runways) were out of his financial reach.
“So I just went out and bought a chunk of property and went to county commission meetings and all that stuff to put in a [private] airport,” Husted said.
There was resistance at first, so he had to perform a go-around and make a second approach.
“By the time I got around to doing it again, those people had moved on or died. And I was a lot better friends with my neighbors then,” he explained.
Then came time to name the dirt airstrip.
“When I got to talking to the Federal Aviation Administration, I said, ‘Well, the airplane’s Happy Butt. The airport ought to be the same.’ I’m an FAA designee, so I know a lot of people at the agency and they all thought it was a great idea,” Husted added.
Happy Butt Airport is private but just about any pilot can land there with permission, or in the case of an emergency.
Husted said, “We’ve got a sticker and it’s got a picture of a corgi’s butt and says ‘I touched down at Happy Butt. We’ve actually got corgis that come out and greet you when you come in.”
More information can be found on Colorado Today’s YouTube feed from September 29, 2025. Begin listening at 13:22.
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