John Stasny tipped the wing of his sky blue Cessna 172 last week, hundreds of feet above Silverdale. Simultaneous views of the Olympic and Cascade mountain ranges spread out on either side of the Puget Sound, a vista that is always there, but is often hidden to the earthbound.

“It’s kind of like God’s country being up there,” Stasny said when back on the ground at Apex Airpark on Willamette Meridian Road.

It’s a point of view denied by mountain climbers, even commercial airplane travelers, but relished by pilots of private planes, small aircraft meant for those who have fallen in love with the wild blue yonder.

“It’s so much nicer than what you see out on an airliner where you’re so far up you’ve lost perspective,” said Stasny, 63, a member of the airpark.

The privately owned airport gained notoriety after a Silverdale resident, Richard E. Nims, 74, was reported missing to the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office Nov. 23. While Nims’ story became a Thanksgiving weekend news item and a household name, it was the first many had heard of the airport.

That kind of attention isn’t always appreciated by those who love flying.

“People think these little airplanes are just falling out of the sky,” said Charlie Bernert, president of the Apex Property Owners Improvement Association, the group that owns the airport.

The owners association is made up of 42 people, each of them part owners of the airport, but one does not have to be an owner to use its services. Most of the owners live on or next to the airpark property, including Bernert and Stasny. Stasny’s hangar and home sits next to the 2,500 foot-long runway strip.

The airpark didn’t begin with the association. It started with the efforts of a Silverdale couple, Ralph and Elizabeth Walker. In about 1946, the Walkers bought the land and bulldozed it to make way for a gravel strip, said Jeff Fraisure, one of the original owners of the association. They named it Apex Airpark.

With the encouragement of friends, in the late 1960s, Ralph Walker began to develop lots for houses on the west side of the airport. He died in the early 1970s and his wife took over running the airport and a gas station. Elizabeth Walker eventually decided to put it up for sale in 1980.

A logging company was interested in the property and purchased over a hundred acres, while the Apex Property Owners Improvement Association formed as a nonprofit and bought about 15 acres that included the taxi and runway, Fraisure said.

Fraisure, now 58, was the first president of the association that started with about 20 members.

In 1981 the group paved the runway and in 1985 installed lighting and a parallel taxiing turnout.

“We were out there raking rocks by hand to get ready for the runway because we didn’t have any money left,” he said.

Located near Anderson Hill Road, not much has changed at the airpark since 1980 — with an exception on where planes can fly.

“The problem with aviation now — the security after 9/11, everything has changed,” Fraisure said. “It’s kept a lot of people out of aviation.”

After the terrorist attacks in 2001, flying restrictions were placed over and near military bases across the county. Fraisure said that a temporary flight restriction area was placed over Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, which did not allow pilots leaving Apex Airpark to take off directly north, since the airpark is located south of the base. Now pilots leaving Apex can takeoff northbound but they must turn back south and either go east and then head north, or go west and head north up the west side of Hood Canal, he added.

Nims was last seen flying out of Apex Airpark Nov. 17 and the wreckage of his Citabria Scout and his body was discovered southwest of Bremerton Nov. 26.

The county Coroner’s Office identified Nims’ cause of death as blunt force injuries to the head, neck and chest. Toxicology results take about 10 weeks.

“Because we’re a public use airport, we cannot tell somebody when they can come and go,” Bernert said, adding that Nims had been cautioned about flying in bad weather.

Mike Fergus, a spokesman for the Northwest Mountain Region for the Federal Aviation Administration, said that the association has no authority to tell someone when they can and cannot fly.

Nims did not file a flight plane before he flew out of Apex Airpark, according to sheriff reports, but Fergus said it is not a requirement.

“It’s not mandatory, but it’s for safety reasons,” Fergus said. Bernert said pilots typically file flight plans for long trips where the destination may be in a different state, indicating Nims did not plan on traveling very far.

Apex Airpark is considered a rural essential airport by the state Department of Transportation.

“Every airport is important to the system at large” because of its use in natural disasters and other emergencies, said Carter Timmerman, aviation planner with the aviation division of the state Department of Transportation.

Because the airport is at a “high point,” planes can fly in supplies if highways are blocked, said Bernert. The state Department of Fish and Wildlife operates out of the airpark to conduct fish counts. Other agencies also use the airpark, including the Washington State Patrol.

Bernert estimated the airpark has about 65 planes, all two and four-seaters with the exception of a few that can seat six. About 15 to 20 planes takeoff and land each day, with numbers higher in the summer, he added.

The 68-year-old is grateful for his easy access to the airstrip, but is worried with closures of small airports across the state. Blaine Municipal Airport in Whatcom County and JZ Airport in Almira in Lincoln County both closed in 2008, with an airport in Spanaway scheduled to close, according to the state Department of Transportation.

“As the population continues to grow, then the pressure comes up to stop the noise and the airports go away,” Bernert said.

Though Bernert has concerns, he still enjoys the freedom flying gives him to go anywhere he wants. He has traveled all over the country by plane including to Tennessee, California and Louisiana.

For Stasny, it’s always been his goal.

“People live on golf courses and lake-fronts,” he said. “Living on an airport was my dream.”