Cromwell Dixon Campground

I was pleasantly surprised and how beautiful this campground was. I was in spot 8 which was on the top of the hill overlooking the valley with flowers all around me in July. Chose to come here because it was a hundred degrees down in the lowlands and much cooler up here on the Continental divide. There is one giant pull through spot and the rest are back in. Nice picnic tables and a few vault toilets . You're only 500 feet from the highway so you can hear some traffic but it never bothered me. Campsites are 100 ft apart or more. If I arrived late and there were no spots I would overnight in the day use area, then move the next morning. Not legal, but probably no problem. (Make left instead of right into CG, then quarter mile down good dirt road. ) Not many places to bike ride, I tried but only got in 6 miles on mainly dirt.

Nothing special here, although the sites are spaced out so there is privacy. The elevation at 6200 ft is cooler than the Helena Valley. This is an ideal overnighter with easy access from Hwy, potable water, close to town and good cell connection. Highway noise, yes, at night not too bad. The price is right as the KOA in Helena wants $60\night. Excellent solar too.

Clean and well maintained campground. Stayed one night in a tent. Vault toilets were very clean, however the water from the taps I would not drink. We arrived around 4pm and there were a ton of flies and mosquitoes so spent the evening in the tent. Our site was right next to a field full of cows which made some noise but nothing to keep you up at night.

Beautiful sunset, spacious sites, and wildflowers everywhere! Unfortunately, a lot of cows came over and surrounded our site, A LOT OF COWS! They pooped everywhere and mooed ALL night so we didn’t get any sleep. Not sure if this is normal or if they escaped but they did all go back to their field in the morning. No trash on site but good water spigots (2) and toilets we didn’t use. Highway noise was fine.

This used to be a beautiful, shady camp just off of Highway 12 and a great pit stop midway to Glacier National Park for me. Then the Forest Service came through in late 2017 and clear cut all of the trees out of the camp due to pine beetle infestation. They left quite a mess behind with several haphazard piles of trees scattered along the outer perimeter of the camp and lots of stumps and branches littering the campsites. I do hope they plan on coming back to clean things up a bit.
Most of the sites are in full sun now. Some of the sites are large and a couple of pull through sites that would be easy access for large RVs. The campsites are gravel and most are sloped. Table and fire ring at each site. No garbage service here. The bathrooms are generally clean and there are two water taps in camp.
There is quite a bit of traffic noise from the highway - its a heavily used trucking route and due to the steep grade of the pass the trucks make a lot of noise climbing the hill.
With the lack of trees, you'll have a front-row seat for some amazing sunsets in just about every site.
Cell service won't be a problem, there is a cell tower on the hill behind camp.

No fees being charged right now (June 2019)

My Montana experience has been marked by spotty coverage as much as it has by beautiful scenery. I was pleased-as-pie that this campground has excellent coverage (well, for Montana) and a great location in the pass close to Helena.

The road is paved all the way in, but has lots of cracks. Look for Macdonald Pass Recreation Area (no campground signs on the highway heading west). There is a bit of highway noise, but it's far in the distance.

This campground is at MacDonald Pass on the Continental Divide and has access to the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail. We did a short hike on the trail and it was really lovely and worth exploring. Note, the trail is not directly accessible from the campground, but starts on the other side of the hill (there are signs directing you).

The campground sites are well placed among trees and each has a fire pit and picnic table. You need to pack out your trash as there are no receptacles. The one downside is that it is quite close to Highway 12 so there is quite a bit of road noise. Much of the noise is due to the fact that cars are either climbing or descending right there, not just whizzing by.

The campground itself has very sketchy cell phone coverage - some sites seemed to have 3 bars of Verizon 3G near the entrance but as you circled the loop it dropped to 1x. So if coverage matters, choose one of the first sites that you come to!

We actually ended up camping in the old "Quigley Group Area" on the other side of the hill because it had 3 bars of LTE. It's a run down looking area and there are really only 3 sites that might work to squeeze into - it feels like boondocking on a forest service road because the area is not maintained and we like that feeling.

By the way, you'll see a large searchlight type of rotating beacon light at the top of the hill by the campground. If you're curious, it's a light from the 1930's that was part of the original Air Mail lighting system! There are very few of these left across the US but 19 of them are in Montana - kinda cool! (You can Google "MacDonald Pass Beacon" for more info and history.)

(If I could, I would give this 3.5 stars...I erred on the side of optimism. The road noise wasn't great but the hiking trail was lovely, so it won.)