This month, jets are roaring over Alcona County, “First of the 83.”

Northern Strike visited Sturgeon Point Lighthouse on July 30. It arrived in the form of four pairs of jet fighters — A-10 Trainers, to be exact.

They buzzed by the tower where I stood watch, doing my docent duty 70 feet in the air. They roared past at close range, all of them going by on the east side, except one show-off who peeled off to skirt by to the west.

They dazzled me. The moment brought me back to the 1970s, when F-114 fighters from the Strategic Air Command flew low over the beach in Harrisville regularly, loudly, and impressively. Those jets took off from Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Oscoda, which was the bombingest base of Operation Desert Shield. It closed in 1993.

That Saturday this July, the A-10s blasted into the sky from the Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center in Alpena, known to me and others my age simply as Phelps Collins.

This is a brief history of the place:

A vast field of blueberries flourished for centuries east of the Thunder Bay River. The Chippewa people residing in the area looked forward to this time of year, when they fanned out among the bushes to fill their sweetgrass baskets with fruit to eat, to preserve for the long winter, and to use as a brilliant dye for their hand-woven textiles.

Europeans arrived on the shores of Thunder Bay in the 1800s, establishing Alpena 150 years ago, and shoving the Native American population onto “reserves.”

Meanwhile, the blueberries kept blooming.

In the 1920s, pioneering aviators ventured to Northeast Michigan in their biplanes to “barnstorm.” They were the first to land an “aeroplane” in the blueberry patch, arriving as harbingers of the future.

Local entrepreneurs noticed: brothers Harry and Philip Fletcher, owners of a paper factory, and Robert Scott, who operated an engineering firm, obtained hundreds of acres of the flatlands the barnstormers had spotted as a relatively safe place to touch down. By then, the place was known as “Seven-Mile Plain” for its proximity to the Alpena Power Co. dam of that name. The utility donated property it owned for the project.

The Fletcher brothers and Price named it for a World War I flying ace, Capt. Phelps Collins. Collins volunteered to fly for the famous French Lafayette Escadrille, then joined the equally storied U.S. 103rd Aero Squadron. He lost a “dog fight” to a German ace in the skies over Paris on March 12, 1918. Thank you for your service, Capt. Collins!

With the onset of FDR’s New Deal in 1933, the Works Progress Administration got busy clearing the blueberry thickets. The first “hangar,” constructed of fieldstones, like so many buildings in the region, opened in 1937. It could shelter four “aeroplanes.”

The onset of a second world war brought a massive expansion to the infant airfield, to make a place for planes to provide air cover to the Soo Locks, and to serve as a maintenance facility for the workhorse B-24 “Liberator” bombers that came off the assembly line at Ford’s Willow Run factory in Ypsilanti.

Like spring mushrooms, the facilities erected at Phelps Collins Field during WWII sprang up, and just as quickly went away, dismantled and auctioned off. A few bargain-seekers bought small quarters to re-erect on the north side of Alpena, where they still stand.

The Cold War made Phelps Field relevant again, as a radar facility ancillary to the sprawling Wurtsmith Air Force in Oscoda. Then it became an Air National Guard base. That’s when I got to know it.

My friend Kevin’s dad was a captain in the Air National Guard and a pilot of F-114s at Phelps Collins. He took us kids for a day at the base, highlighted by a chance to sit in the cockpit of his fighter jet. That is as close to military service as I came in my life. I wanted to enlist on the spot, but I was 12 years old.

Phelps Collins Field closed when Wurtsmith AFB did in 1993, but there were no mothballs for the facility, unlike its Iosco counterpart, which stayed dark until Kallita Air flew in to rescue it.

Phelps Collins Field became the Alpena County Regional Airport.

The Alpena airport continued to operate with the advent of the Combat Readiness Training Center and has prospered from resulting operating subsidies since then.

Northern Strike started eight years ago. Now, it is kind of a big deal.

During the elaborate war game exercises, which will conclude on Saturday, some 5,100 service personnel from all branches of the U.S. military, as well as participants from the United Kingdom, Latvia, and Liberia, based at the CRTC and at Camp Grayling, will range around Northeast Michigan’s land (148,000 square acres) and sky (17,000 square miles of special-use airspace, the most in North America).

Northern Strike pumps about $30 million into the local economy!

I’ve met many folks who were stationed at Wurtsmith, and, after their time in the service, came back to Northeast Michigan to call it home.

To judge from the enthusiasm of today’s service personnel to come Up North for two weeks of war games in the woods and the clear skies of the region, Northern Strike will attract military retirees in the future.

I, for one, look forward to meeting a new neighbor drawn here by his or her experience with Northern Strike, especially one from England, Latvia, or Liberia!