Across the Great Divide

Ten Thousand Dollars to Cross the Divide:

The Flight of Cromwell Dixon, 1911

A Prize in the Mountains

By the autumn of 1911 the airplane was less than a decade old in the United States, and Montana's mountains were still an open problem for the men who flew it. Two pilots, Eugene Ely and J. C. "Bud" Mars, had tried to cross the Continental Divide by air and failed (Axline; Shelton). Shelton, drawing on the Montana aviation historian Frank W. Wiley, adds that Ely abandoned a June attempt at Butte after a crowd rushed the field and damaged his machine, and that Mars came down in Magpie Gulch after about twenty-one miles on an attempt made while he was flying at the Montana State Fair. Those particulars rest on Shelton alone.

The incentive for another try was money. A purse of $10,000 was offered to the first pilot to cross the Divide, and every account that states the amount agrees on it. They disagree on who put it up. Jon Axline, a historian with the Montana Department of Transportation, names the Helena capitalist Lewis Penwell, the Great Northern Railway executive Louis J. Hill, and the circus owner John Ringling. A 2014 account reprinted by the state's aeronautics division credits the State Fair Board and Helena business leaders (Axline; Deedy). The venue was the Helena fairgrounds, which had hosted territorial fairs since 1870 and the first Montana State Fair in 1903 ("The Fairgrounds").

The Pilot

The man who would claim the prize was nineteen. Cromwell Dixon was born in San Francisco on July 9, 1892, and grew up in Columbus, Ohio, where his mother moved the family (Wartenberg; Sauer). As a teenager he built a pedal-powered dirigible and named it the Moon. By 1907 he was exhibiting it at fairs and amusement parks, first near Columbus and then in other cities (Sauer; Axline).

In 1911 he turned to airplanes. He earned Aero Club of America license number 43 that August; Wartenberg gives the date as August 6 and Axline as August 11. At nineteen he was billed as the youngest licensed pilot in the country, and he joined the Curtiss exhibition team, which sent pilots to fairs to show off the biplanes built by Glenn Curtiss (Axline; Kidston; Wartenberg). By late September he was in Helena. Wartenberg reports that local officials had been promised a better-known pilot and were unenthusiastic about an "inexperienced youngster," a detail he alone supplies.

Preparations

Dixon performed at the fair on September 28, and Axline reports three flights that day, with dives and spirals over the crowd. Axline also reports that the Divide attempt was first set for September 29 and postponed because of weather and the fair's interest in a larger crowd on the thirtieth. He adds that Dixon's manager, J. W. Scott, would not allow the flight unless the prize made it worthwhile, and that the Helena Daily Record warned beforehand that a single gust could kill the pilot.

The plan was to fly west from the fairgrounds and land near Blossburg, a Northern Pacific station on the far side of the mountains, where a large fire was lit to mark the field (Axline; Kidston; Shelton). Governor Edwin L. Norris gave Dixon a letter addressed to the people of Blossburg to deliver (Axline; Kidston; Wartenberg).

September 30, 1911

The surviving accounts agree on the outline of the flight and differ on most of its numbers. Axline and Wartenberg both remark that little is documented about the crossing itself.

Wartenberg and KTVH, which cites the New York Times of October 1, 1911, give the takeoff as 2:08 p.m. Shelton says two o'clock, and Kidston says shortly after two. The landing time is steadier. Wartenberg, Kidston, and KTVH all put it at 2:34 p.m. (Wartenberg; Kidston; Davidson). Depending on the takeoff, the flight lasted twenty-six minutes (2:08 to 2:34) or thirty-four (2:00 to 2:34). The Helena As She Was history and Deedy both state thirty-four ("Cromwell Dixon"; Deedy).

Axline divides the flight into an eleven-minute spiral up to about 7,000 feet, a turn west at roughly 2:20, and fourteen minutes covering seventeen miles to the field. Those figures fit a 2:08 takeoff and a 2:34 landing, but he is the only source to supply them. Wartenberg gives the distance as fifteen miles; Axline, Davidson, and the Helena As She Was history say seventeen. Axline, Shelton, and Deedy agree on an altitude near 7,000 feet.

After landing, Dixon delivered the governor's letter and sent word of his arrival by telegraph, one message to fair officials and one to the Curtiss company (Axline; Shelton; "Cromwell Dixon"). A photograph in the Montana Historical Society's collection, dated September 30, 1911, shows him in the aircraft at the Blossburg field, preparing to return ("First Airship Crossing").

The Return

Kidston puts Dixon's departure from Blossburg at 3:16 p.m. Axline says he rested fifty minutes first, which would make it a few minutes later. The trip back is described unevenly. Wartenberg and Axline say he fought wind and updrafts approaching the pass, while the Helena As She Was history says strong tail winds helped him ("Cromwell Dixon"). The sources agree that he reached Helena, circled the fairgrounds twice, and landed in the infield before the grandstand (Axline; Kidston; "Cromwell Dixon").

Contemporary newspaper reports, quoted by Kidston and Axline, described an ovation larger than any the fairgrounds had given anyone. Norris called Dixon the greatest aviator in the world, and Axline adds that Dixon declined to give a speech ("Cromwell Dixon"; Axline). The record on the money is muddled. The Helena As She Was history says Norris handed over a check for $10,000, Shelton places the award at Blossburg, and Axline writes that Dixon never had the chance to spend the prize ("Cromwell Dixon"; Shelton; Axline).

What the Flight Showed

Most flying in 1911 took place over level ground. Martin Kidston, Dixon's biographer, told KTVH that pilots in the Midwest worked in flat country and stable air, and that crossing the Rockies at altitude and in turbulence showed what the machines could do (Davidson). Axline describes the crossing as a long-standing goal of American aviators. The flight carried no cargo beyond the governor's letter and opened no route; its significance lay in the demonstration.

Spokane

Dixon left Helena for the Interstate Fair in Spokane, Washington. On October 2, 1911, two days after the Divide flight, a gust of wind caught his biplane early in an exhibition, and it fell into a railroad cut near the fairgrounds (Axline; Wartenberg; Sauer). Spectators reported that he called out "Here I go" before it struck the ground (Wartenberg; Axline; Sauer). He died within the hour in a Spokane hospital; Axline says forty-five minutes and Sauer says thirty. He was nineteen. His body was returned to Columbus and buried there, in Green Lawn Cemetery (Sauer; Shelton).

Commemoration and Dispute

Helena residents put up a monument at the fairgrounds within a few years, and others placed a stone marker near the landing site (Axline; Southwest Montana). In 1939 the Forest Service built a campground at MacDonald Pass and named it for Dixon (Axline; Southwest Montana). The Cromwell Dixon Campground, with fifteen sites about fifteen miles west of Helena on the Divide, is listed as open ("Cromwell Dixon Campground"). A roadside marker at the pass credits him as the first aviator in America to fly over the Divide and records that he died two days later ("The Frenchwoman's Road"). In 2014 a quarter-scale replica of his Curtiss biplane went on display at the Helena Regional Airport (Deedy).

Where he crossed is less settled than the memorials suggest. Kidston and Wartenberg place the flight over Mullan Pass. Axline puts the landing on the west slope at MacDonald Pass, and the roadside marker at MacDonald Pass says the flight passed not far away ("The Frenchwoman's Road"). The sources do not reconcile the two.

A Note on the Sources

This account rests on thirteen sources. Facts stated without attribution, including Dixon's age and Curtiss affiliation, the September 30 date, the departure from the Helena fairgrounds for Blossburg, the governor's letter, the $10,000 prize, the signal fire, the double circle of the fairgrounds on the return, and the Spokane death on October 2, appear in at least two accounts. Details attributed to a single author above are unconfirmed. These include the Ely and Mars particulars, the named donors, the postponement, the eleven-minute climb, and the departure time from Blossburg.

Other points are contested outright: the license date, the takeoff time and duration, the distance, the wind on the return, the payment of the prize, and the pass. Weather is disputed as well. Wartenberg quotes a Helena newspaper on a stiff west wind as Dixon arrived in town, while Axline and Shelton describe clearing or clear weather on the afternoon of the flight. The roadside marker calls the Spokane event the Inland Empire Fair; the other sources call it the Interstate Fair.

Two bodies of evidence were not consulted directly: Del Phillips's article on Dixon in Montana: The Magazine of Western History (vol. 59, no. 3, Autumn 2009), which other sources here cite, and the 1911 newspapers themselves, including the Helena Independent and the New York Times of October 1. Quotations and times from those newspapers come through Axline, Kidston, and Davidson. Only the Montana Historical Society photograph record is an archival document; the rest are secondary or tertiary. Anyone who needs minute-level precision should consult the newspapers at the Montana Historical Society Research Center. Every source names Dixon as the first pilot to fly across the Continental Divide, and none documents an earlier crossing, but none examines the question beyond Montana.

Works Cited

Axline, Jon. "The Boy Aviator: Cromwell Dixon and the Conquest of the Continental Divide." Airport Journals, 1 Sept. 2004, http://airportjournals.com/the-boy-aviator-cromwell-dixon-and-the-conquest-of-the-continental-divide/. Accessed 26 Oct. 2026.

"Cromwell Dixon Campground." Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest, US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, 18 May 2026, https://www.fs.usda.gov/r01/helena-lewisclark/recreation/cromwell-dixon-campground. Accessed 26 Oct. 2026.

"Cromwell Dixon, 1892-1911: First Flight Across the Continental Divide, 1911." Helena As She Was, https://helenahistory.org/cromwell-dixon.htm. Accessed 26 Oct. 2026.

Davidson, Marian. "Cromwell Dixon: Pioneer of the Big Sky." KTVH, 30 Sept. 2022, https://www.ktvh.com/news/cromwell-dixon-pioneer-of-the-big-sky. Accessed 26 Oct. 2026.

Deedy, Alexander. "History Recreated: Model of First Plane to Cross Continental Divide on Display in Helena." Montana and the Sky, vol. 65, no. 11, Nov. 2014, p. 1, Montana Department of Transportation, Aeronautics Division, https://www.mdt.mt.gov/other/webdata/external/aero/508archive/newsletters/2014/aeronov14-archive-2026-03-27.pdf. Reprinted from the Helena Independent Record, 30 Sept. 2014. Accessed 26 Oct. 2026.

"First Airship Crossing Continental Divide | Sept. 30-11. Cromwell Dixon - Aviator | Start For Helena." Photograph by unidentified photographer, 30 Sept. 1911. L. H. Jorud Photograph Collection, Lot 037, Photographs from the Montana Historical Society, Montana Historical Society Library and Archives, Montana History Portal, https://www.mtmemory.org/nodes/view/76687. Accessed 26 Oct. 2026.

"The Fairgrounds." Helena As She Was, https://helenahistory.org/the_fairgrounds.htm. Accessed 26 Oct. 2026.

"The Frenchwoman's Road." Historical marker, US Highway 12, MacDonald Pass, Powell County, Montana. The Historical Marker Database, https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=127754. Accessed 26 Oct. 2026.

Kidston, Martin J. "People - Cromwell Dixon: A Boy and His Plane." Distinctly Montana, 8 Sept. 2011, https://www.distinctlymontana.com/people-cromwell-dixon. Excerpt from Cromwell Dixon: A Boy and His Plane, Farcountry Press. Accessed 26 Oct. 2026.

Sauer, Sydney. "Aviation Prodigy Cromwell Dixon's Career Took Flight over Columbus." WOSU Public Media, 8 Mar. 2022, https://www.wosu.org/2022-03-08/aviation-prodigy-cromwell-dixons-career-took-flight-over-columbus. Accessed 26 Oct. 2026.

Shelton, Joseph. "Conquering the Divide: Early Aviation in Montana." Distinctly Montana, 21 Apr. 2025, https://www.distinctlymontana.com/conquering-divide-early-aviation-montana. Accessed 26 Oct. 2026.

Southwest Montana. "The Uncrowned King of the Celestial Pathfinders." Southwest Montana Blog, n.d., https://southwestmt.com/blog/the-uncrowned-king-of-the-celestial-pathfinders-1/. Accessed 26 Oct. 2026.

Wartenberg, Steve. "He Was a Young and Gifted Aviator-and Then Fate Came Calling." HistoryNet, 18 Oct. 2023, https://historynet.com/cromwell-dixon-aviator/. Accessed 26 Oct. 2026.