The Air Zoo: Portage's hands-on flight museum

Plenty of mid-sized cities have a children’s museum. Portage has a Blackbird. The Air Zoo sits beside the airport on the city’s east side. It grew from a museum founded in 1977 by former Women Airforce Service Pilots — the WASPs who ferried warplanes in WWII. Today it’s a Smithsonian-affiliated aerospace and science center. Its collection is one of the country’s more remarkable. The centerpiece is an SR-71B, the rare two-seat trainer version of the fastest air-breathing aircraft ever built. It hangs suspended overhead like a steel thunderhead. Around it sit warbirds, spacecraft exhibits, and full-scale galleries painted with the largest indoor mural you’re likely to see.

It’s a hometown treasure rather than just a tourist stop, because it behaves like one. There are amusement-style rides and flight simulators for kids. Add summer camps and school field trips by the busload. In the restoration workshops, volunteers bring drowned Lake Michigan trainers back to life in public view. Families moving to Portage discover quickly that “want to go to the Air Zoo?” never gets an argument.