Photograph of airmail being loaded in New Brunswick, New Jersey

July 1, 1925

Postal employees loading mail into a de Havilland mail airplane at Hadley Field in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Regularly scheduled transcontinental airmail service, which had begun in the summer of 1924, was extended to the east coast with the completion of a series of airmail beacons that helped guide pilots across the country. Airmail pilots Dean Smith and James DeWitt Hill carried mail out of Hadley Field on the of July 1, 1925. Smith ran out of gas and crashed outside of Cleveland, Ohio. Hill reached Cleveland with his mail, which was transferred onto airplanes with new pilots for the next part of the transcontinental journey.