Sights & Attractions in Billings, Little Big Horn, and the Montana Plains

Billings, Little Big Horn, and the Montana Plains Sights

Most visitors to Montana neglect the eastern plains in their rush to get to the increasingly crowded forests and peaks farther west, but the grassy prairies that roll ever onward into the Dakotas and Canada should not be overlooked simply because they lack the majesty of a mountain range. Stop on the plains for their isolation, their serenity, and their sky. Unbroken by man-made objects (or even natural ones), the heavens don't just stretch upward—they stretch outward. At night the effect becomes even more intense, as millions of stars, undisguised by the lights of civilization, beam down from every direction onto an otherwise pitch-black landscape.

Major roads are few and far between in this part of the state. I-94 sweeps westward from North Dakota to Billings, where it joins I-90, which comes up from Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains and snakes west through the Rockies into Idaho. The only other interstate is I-15, which threads north out of Idaho and onto the plains outside Helena before looping around Great Falls and heading to Canada. In the vast stretches of prairie out of reach of the interstates, the key thoroughfares are U.S. 2, also known as the Hi-Line, running east-west across the top of the state; U.S. 212, running southeast out of Billings into South Dakota; and U.S. 87, running north out of Billings.

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