The Formative Years
At first, AirSkunk "existed" as an imaginary intrastate carrier. It arguably might have been the first (imaginary or otherwise) to recognize an upside afforded by the business model of a very young Southwest Airlines: while Southwest was focused on the lucrative Dallas-Houston-San Antonio markets, AirSkunk would answer by heading to places where other airlines couldn't set down. With the slogan There's more to Texas than just a few lucrative air routes, "service" was initiated to places like Tolar, Negley, Study Butte, Agua Nueva, Whiteflat, and Fabens, from a central "hub" in Pottsville, Texas. Never mind that Pottsville didn't actually have an airport, we just adopted the closest actual airport in Hamilton, a few miles down the road.
Then, during my undergraduate days, interested classmates petitioned for expansion of AirSkunk into their home states. So AirSkunk's route system soon stretched to Florida, Maine, Wisconsin, Illinois, Wyoming, and Nevada.
The only real requirements for inclusion in the AirSkunk route system were that the communities "served" be a) small, b) have strange or interesting place names, and c) have no identifiable or significant airport. Wytopitlock, Maine; Gays Mills, Wisconsin; Scotty's Junction, Nevada; East Thermopolis, Wyoming; and West Frostproof, Florida (whatever happened to the regular Frostproof?) all became destinations for the proud bird with the striped tail (borrowed, sorta, from a slogan for Continental Airlines).
