Back in the '90s the Cult of the Dead Cow (a favorite hacking collective at the time) proposed using those mini-satellite dishes that were throwaways when folks changed TV providers, and microwave transmitters/receivers. They did a lot of tests to see how far they could transmit, and IIRC were good as long as they had line of sight.

Mountains between me and Portland will prevent my unilateral creation of an independent wireless backbone to the internet, I think.