MacDonald Pass, Montana

US Highway 12, the only highway heading west from Helena, Montana’s State Capital, crosses over the Continental Divide at MacDonald Pass, an old toll road that first opened in 1866. On a rise on the south side of the pass are ruins of a former vista point, which still has a nice view east towards Helena. There is an active microwave relay tower, a common sight at mountain passes, adorned with cellular and other antennas now too. A less common sight at the pass is an old airway beacon, now abandoned. Though it postdates the incident, it makes an interesting memorial to a singular aviation event that occurred here in 1911, when a pilot named Cromwell Dixon was the first person to fly over the Continental Divide, doing so just a couple miles north of here. He landed his biplane nearby and wired New York from the west side of the Mullan Tunnel, to announce he had made it, and so he could collect the $10,000 award for doing so. He continued on to a fair in Spokane, where he died in a crash two days later.