Transcontinental Airmail Beacon Site - Albany County, WY - Ground Based Air Navigation Support Structures on Waymarking.com

The U.S. Post Office Department’s enthusiasm for transporting the mail by airplane in the early part of the twentieth century helped lay the foundation for America’s commercial airline industry. In 1918, an airmail route was established between New York and Washington, DC, via Philadelphia, which was eventually extended to Boston. Though discontinued shortly thereafter, it was successful enough to start the Post Office folks to think bigger, and in 1924 a new coast-to-coast service was inaugurated between New York and San Francisco via Chicago and Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The transcontinental route basically followed the original transcontinental railroad route and though the planes were faster than trains, the actual time it took to deliver the mail wasn’t much better because the pilots couldn’t fly at night. To address this situation, the P. O. Department devised a series of beacons all along the route such that when passing over one, the next one could be seen. Initially, these were built between Chicago and Cheyenne, where the night flying was done, but eventually they were used all across that route and along other routes that sprang up as well.

Each beacon station consisted of a fifty-foot-tall tower with a rotating beacon on top. Below the tower was a large concrete arrow pointing toward the next station to the east. This arrow was painted a bright yellow for better visibility. There were also supporting structures to house fuel and equipment and a keeper’s residence. It wasn’t long before these beacons gave way to radio-based navigational aids. Today, very few of these towers and buildings remain and some of the arrows were destroyed but the remnants of many of the arrows may still be found and are accessible.

Not wanting to become a commercial airline itself, the Post Office Department began contracting out the various routes to private enterprises. These Contract Airmail (CAM) routes were given numbers and the beacons were designated by their CAM number and route segment. The official designation for this beacon was SL-O 18_37 i.e., Salt Lake to Omaha, CAM 18, beacon 37. (CAM 18 was part of the original transcontinental route from San Francisco to Chicago.) It’s also known as the Pilot Hill or Sherman Hill beacon. Some of these private contractors became the commercial airlines of today.

This particular beacon had gained some notoriety since, at 8837 ft., it represented the highest elevation of any beacon along the route. Shortly after its completion, The Post Office Dept. asked the keeper to photograph the beacon for publicity purposes, but as it turned out, the keeper wasn’t a very good photographer. When the plate was developed in Omaha, the top of the tower was cut off - the photo of the beacon was missing the beacon. Photographer Nat Dewell of Omaha took photos of a nearby beacon station and even got a local pilot to fly a biplane near the tower for the picture. He then combined his photo with the original to create a composite representing the Sherman Hill beacon. This photo appeared on the cover of Aviation magazine, advertisements and a Post Office bulletin. It eventually made its way onto a postage stamp issued in 1928 when the airmail rate was reduced to 5c. However, the stamp’s designer converted the biplane to a more ‘modern’ design. (Click the link below to see the original composite photo.)

The site is located between Laramie and Cheyenne, just off Forest Service Road 703 about a mile north of its intersection with Happy Jack Road, (that being a about a mile north of the Happy Jack Road exit off Interstate 80). Also near this site was the highest elevation along the original transcontinental railroad as well as the highest elevation of the old Lincoln highway and Interstate 80.

Reference: [Web Link] NavAid Type: Visual

Visit Instructions:
1. The waymark coordinates must be personally visited.
2. Give the date and a description of your visit.
3. Post at least one photo taken at the time of your visit.

Recent Visits/Logs:

There are no logs for this waymark yet.