Cromwell Dixon was born in San Francisco on July 9, 1892. His father was reputed to have died in a railroad accident when Cromwell was very young, but the truth was he embezzled funds from the Canadian Pacific Railroad which he worked for and went to prison in Oregon in 1888. After a second failed scheme in San Francisco in 1893, the family split up and his mother moved to Columbus, Ohio where her brother was an officer on the Columbus Police Force. Cromwell was very mechanically inclined and constructed a motor bike and a small roller coaster in the back yard of their home at 221 West 11th Avenue. He was introduced to aviation and dirigibles at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair where he saw Roy Knabenshue fly the first dirigible in the US. With the encouragement and help of fellow Ohioan Roy Knabenshue of Toledo, Cromwell built a small human powered dirigible based on a bicycle frame and flew his “Sky Cycle” at Driving Park Racetrack on June 9, 1907. At age 18 Dixon joined the Glenn Curtis exhibition team and earned his pilot’s license, #43, on August 6, 1911, making him the youngest licensed pilot in the US. On September 30, 1911 he became the first aviator to fly across the Continental Divide at Mullen Pass, Montana. Two days later, on October 2nd, at the Interstate Fair in Spokane, Washington, Dixon was fatally injured when his Curtis biplane crashed into a railway cut adjacent to the fairgrounds. He died at the local hospital soon after at the age of 19.