09/19/2026
Many people travel JAARS Road without realizing that it leads to one of the Waxhaw area’s most remarkable stories…a place where airplanes, faith, language and service have connected rural Union County with some of the most isolated communities in the world.
The story began with William Cameron “Cam” Townsend.
In 1917, Townsend traveled to Guatemala to distribute Spanish Bibles. He soon discovered that many Indigenous people spoke Kaqchikel and could not understand the Spanish books he carried. That experience convinced him that people should be able to read the Bible in the language they understood best.
Townsend later helped establish the Summer Institute of Linguistics in 1934 and Wycliffe Bible Translators in 1942. As translation teams began working in remote regions of Latin America, transportation and communication became serious and sometimes life-threatening challenges.
Missionaries often traveled for days or weeks by canoe, mule, truck and muddy jungle trails. Townsend believed that airplanes and shortwave radios could help reach places where roads did not exist.
In 1948, Jungle Aviation and Radio Service JAARS was officially established to provide aircraft, pilots, mechanics and reliable radio communication for translation workers serving in remote areas.
By the late 1950s, JAARS needed a headquarters in the United States where pilots and mechanics could be evaluated and trained, aircraft could be repaired and supplies could be prepared for service overseas.
That need brought JAARS to the Waxhaw area.
In 1961, Henderson Belk of the Belk department-store family donated 256 acres of pine forest and former cotton fields outside Waxhaw. The quiet rural property offered enough space for an airstrip, hangars, workshops, offices and a community for the people who would serve there.
The first airstrip was dirt, and the first hangar was modest. But the vision was enormous.
Over the decades, additional land and buildings were added. The original cotton fields grew into a campus of more than 630 acres, with an airport, aircraft hangars, training facilities, workshops, offices, residences and places of worship and fellowship.
From Waxhaw, pilots learned how to land on short and difficult airstrips. Mechanics prepared aircraft for demanding conditions. Engineers developed equipment and communication systems, while countless volunteers and staff members used their individual skills to support work around the world.
JAARS eventually expanded beyond airplanes and radios. Its teams began providing specialized vehicles, boats, safety equipment and training to help people cross mountains, jungles, rivers and other places where ordinary transportation could not go.
Visitors can also explore this history at the JAARS Museum. Its exhibits tell the story of JAARS, aviation and the development of writing systems around the world. The graves of Cam Townsend and his wife, Elaine, are located in the Townsend Meditation Garden on the campus where their vision continues.
The arrival of JAARS transformed what had once been pine woods and cotton fields into an international community. Generations of pilots, mechanics, translators, teachers, technicians, missionaries and their families have lived, worked and worshiped in the Waxhaw area.
JAARS Road may appear to be simply another rural road bearing the name of the place it serves. But follow it, and you will find a remarkable connection between Union County and the wider world. From a dirt airstrip outside Waxhaw, a mission took flight and more than six decades later, its influence continues to reach the ends of the earth.
