Montana’s Historic Airway Beacon Corridors

Between 1926 and 1938, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Air Commerce created 18,000 miles of airway corridors in the United States and installed 1,550 airway beacons, marking corridors for night flying. When pilots were at one beacon, they could see the next one on their route. The establishment of the airway corridors signaled a profound evolution of the nation’s air transportation system.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) decommissioned most of the beacons by 1972 and turned Montana’s system over to the Montana Aeronautics Division of the Montana Department of Transportation (MDT). By 2017, the obsolescence of the beacon system and shrinking state budgets contributed to MDT’s decision to decommission the remaining 17 airway beacons in western Montana.

Eight Montana airway beacons are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. They include the beacons at Homestake Pass east of Butte, Canyon Resort near Dell in Beaverhead County, MacDonald Pass west of Helena, Silver Bow west of Butte, Spokane Bench east of Helena, Lookout Pass and St. Regis near the Montana/Idaho border, and Whitetail north of Whitehall. Each has been adopted by new owners and will continue standing, as sentinels of Montana’s early aviation history.

Search “airway beacons” on the Historic Montana website to learn more about the Whitetail, MacDonald Pass, Silver Bow, Spokane Hill, and Homestake airway beacons. https://historicmt.org/

View a video of Kate Hampton’s 2013 presentation on the history of the Montana Airway Beacons System on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbtX8WQrsx0.

Learn more about the history of Montana’s airway beacons from the Montana Department of Transportation. https://www.mdt.mt.gov/aviation/beacons.aspx

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