Billings, Little Big Horn, and the Montana Plains: Places to Explore

South of Montana's geographical center an island of rocky peaks rises more than 3,000 feet from the sea of windswept prairie, beckoning scenery lovers and hard-core adventurers alike. A combination of pine... Read more

Centered on a 60-mi-long lake, this park stretches between the Pryor and Bighorn mountains, well into Wyoming. Really just a wide spot on the Bighorn River, the lake fills much of Bighorn Canyon, whose... Read more

A bastion of civilization on an otherwise empty prairie, Billings is a classic Western city, full of the kind of history that shaped the frontier. The Minnesota and Montana Land and Improvement Company... Read more

The gateway to the Upper Missouri River, this town of 1,594 people has a rich and rugged past that's captured in a trio of excellent museums. Lewis and Clark first camped at this site less than an hour... Read more

Fort Peck itself is mostly a quiet retirement town today, with 240 residents; at night the lights of ranch houses here are few and far between. It owes its existence to massive Fort Peck Dam, built on... Read more

One of Great Falls' greatest assets is its sense of history. Here, along the banks of the Missouri where the plains meet the Rockies, explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark encountered one of the... Read more

Although its roots are firmly planted in cattle ranching, Hardin makes a significant portion of its living as a visitor gateway to the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument just a few miles to the... Read more

Mainly a place to stay when visiting Fort Assinniboine, the town of Havre (population 9,621) is the trading center for a wide area of extreme north-central Montana and southern Alberta and Saskatchewan... Read more

Started as a small trading post in the shadow of the low-lying Moccasin and Judith mountains, Lewistown has evolved into a pleasant town of nearly 7,000 residents. Several locations are listed on the National... Read more

When the smoke cleared on June 25, 1876, neither Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer (1839-76) nor the 200 soldiers, scouts, and civilians were alive to tell the story of their part of the battle... Read more

Established in 1935, this refuge sandwiched between U.S. 2 and the Canadian border encompasses more than 30,000 acres of wetlands that provide habitat for dozens of mammal species, including beavers, muskrats... Read more

History buffs enjoy the ranch town of Miles City (population 8,120), at the confluence of the cottonwood-lined Tongue and Yellowstone rivers. The federal Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 stated that this land... Read more