Beaumont, Kansas, the Grass Strip Where You Taxi Down Main Street and Park Your Airplane in Front of the Hotel for a Slice of Pie

Beaumont, Kansas is a public-use grass airstrip in the Flint Hills where pilots land on turf, taxi down the town’s Main Street, and park their airplanes directly in front of the Beaumont Hotel, a working frontier hotel built in 1879. The airport identifier is 07S, the turf runway runs roughly 2,000 feet, and the reward for flying in is a burger and a legendary slice of pie eaten on the hotel’s wraparound porch. It is one of the few places in American aviation where an aircraft and a public street legally share the same pavement.

Where Is Beaumont, Kansas, and What Makes It Special?

Beaumont sits out in the Flint Hills of southeast Kansas, a town of roughly 50 people surrounded by open prairie and cattle country. It is easy to drive past and never notice. From the air, though, it is a genuine destination.

The airport is a grass strip on the edge of town with no perimeter fence and no conventional ramp. You touch down on the turf, roll out, and turn onto Main Street. From there you taxi past houses, mailboxes, and a stop sign, sharing the road with pickup trucks, and roll right up to the front porch of the hotel to shut down.

For the locals, this is unremarkable. An airplane easing past a mailbox on a weekday afternoon is simply part of life in Beaumont.

The Beaumont Hotel: A Frontier Landmark Older Than Powered Flight

The centerpiece is the Beaumont Hotel, a two-story white clapboard building with a large wraparound porch lined with rocking chairs. It went up in 1879 as a railroad stop, serving cattlemen, cowboys, and drovers moving herds through the Flint Hills. It was a working hotel decades before the Wright brothers flew.

When aviation discovered Beaumont, the town leaned into it. Today the hotel doubles as the fly-in’s clubhouse, restaurant, and front-row seat to the grass strip.

Next to the hotel stands a round, wooden railroad water tower that once fed steam locomotives. It is now the visual landmark pilots look for from the air. Spotting the tower over the prairie is the signal that you’ve arrived.

How Do You Fly Into Beaumont (07S)?

Beaumont is a real airport that deserves real planning. Key facts:

Identifier: 07S
Surface: Public-use grass (turf)
Runway length: Approximately 2,000 feet

That length is generous for the light aircraft that belong here and tight for anything heavier. This is a taildragger and Cub kind of field - a back-to-basics, stick-and-rudder destination.

Because you’re landing on grass, use soft-field technique: keep weight off the nosewheel if you have one, let the airplane settle, and carry a little power through the touchdown. The Flint Hills wind runs hard across open terrain, so read the windsock and respect it.

Once you’re down and slowed, taxi onto the street to park. You are a guest in town, so go slow, keep your head on a swivel, and watch for cars. There are tie-downs at the hotel, and someone will almost certainly wander over to admire your airplane.

Call Ahead Before You Go

This is a small, historic operation kept alive more by love than by money, and its open days and hours can shift with the seasons. Always call ahead to confirm the hotel and kitchen are open before you point the nose toward the water tower. Never bet a hundred-dollar-hamburger run on a restaurant you didn’t verify.

What’s the Pie Like on the Porch?

The Beaumont pie is legendary in the flying community, and the burgers, iced tea, and coffee earn their reputation too. Inside, it’s warm wood, old photographs, and the smell of a real kitchen at work.

The full experience is carrying your food out to a rocking chair on the porch and looking out over the grass at your own airplane sitting in the sun, nosed back toward the hills you flew out of. Pilots describe multi-generational traditions here - flying in as children, then returning decades later to share the same porch and the same pie with their grandkids.

Why Beaumont Matters to the Flying Community

Beaumont has nearly lost the hotel more than once. Keeping a 140-plus-year-old wooden building standing and running a kitchen for a town of 50 is difficult, and there have been stretches when the doors were dark. Each time, local residents and aviators have stepped up to save it, recognizing that a place where an airplane and a Main Street share pavement can’t be rebuilt once it’s gone.

For many pilots, Beaumont is the perfect tool for explaining aviation to non-flyers. Watching a first-time passenger climb out into the street, look from the runway to the porch and back, and break into a grin captures the appeal of general aviation better than any brochure. It’s a reminder that the value of a fly-in isn’t fuel price or runway length - it’s the feeling.

Key Takeaways

Beaumont, Kansas (07S) is a public-use grass strip in the Flint Hills where you taxi down Main Street and park in front of a historic hotel.
The Beaumont Hotel dates to 1879 and sits beside an old wooden railroad water tower that serves as the landmark for arriving pilots.
The turf runway is about 2,000 feet, best suited to light aircraft and taildraggers; use soft-field technique and mind the Flint Hills wind.
Call ahead to confirm the hotel and kitchen are open, since hours change seasonally.
The destination’s real draw is the experience - pie and a burger on the porch with your airplane parked a few feet away.