City of Fountain

In the 1920s, from his garage in Nearby Cherry Grove, Bernard Pietenpol designed and constructed a homemade airplane, using parts from the hardware store and a Model T Ford engine. By 1929, Pietenpol was able to make a flight from Chery Grove to Minneapolis and has since been acknowledged as “the father of the homebuilt aircraft movement in the United States.” By the 1930s, Pietenpol began marketing his plans for the cheap, easily constructed aircraft, known as the Pietenpol Air Camper and Sky Scout. The plans are still available to plane aficionados and are popular around the world. Pietenpol’s 1932 Sky Scout plane, as well as one of his original hangers, can be seen at the Fillmore County History Center and Genealogy Library in Fountain, along with other exhibits on the region’s history sinkholes found in the area, earning it the nickname, “Sinkhole Capital of the USA.”