Aviation captivated America during the 1920s, especially after Charles Lindbergh’s solo Atlantic flight in 1927, and as airfields opened across the country Belgrade built Gallatin County’s first airfield in 1929. The opening of Siefert Field drew 8,000 people and caused the county’s first traffic jam. By 1930, the United States claimed the world’s most advanced airway system, and in 1935 Northwest Airways received federal approval to provide east-west airmail service in Montana. The U.S. Department of Commerce then built the Airway Radio Station at Siefert Field, part of a federally constructed network of airway stations spaced about 200 miles apart that provided services critical to civil aviation. The station housed the radio range and ground-to-air system used by airmail pilots on the Minneapolis-Spokane-Seattle civil airway, while Aeronautics Bureau employees staffed it around the clock, operated radio equipment, gathered weather information, and sent reports by teletype. As technology advanced in the 1930s, high frequency VHF signals proved more reliable and the station’s radio range equipment became obsolete. In 1953 Gallatin County moved the station to nearby Pogreba Field, where it serves as the Three Forks Airport terminal, and the small Craftsman style building, one of two such stations left in Montana, remains a reminder of early airmail service and the technology that made round-the-clock, all-weather flying feasible.