Billings, MT
I was born and raised in Billings and a significant portion of my family still live there. It was a good three day visit, especially because I was able to spend some individual time with each of my two brothers and sister. It’s hard to describe Billings, maybe because I’ve been so closely associated with it, but here goes!
Billings is like that great-aunt that everyone has, the one who has the perfect silver perm, a print dress covered with little flowers and a white lace collar, and, of course, fake pearls and sturdy pumps. But then, after a cocktail, she sits down, and you can see the sailor tattoo winking from her thigh. That’s Billings! Billings is not a tourist destination; it is and has always been a rather conservative working town. However, it is the gateway to the incredible outdoor experience that is Montana and most travelers from the south and east come through Billings. Established in 1888 by the Northern Pacific Railroad, there is no storied history of the Wild, Wild West. Instead it has remained true to the original purpose, to provide a center for commerce and industry for a very large geographic area. Billings (pop. 110,000) is the largest city in the triangle between Spokane, WA, Denver, CO, and Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN, and is the commercial, financial, and medical center of a large area of the US. It’s all about the business. In the beginning it was farming and ranching, now those, while still important, are probably out-weighed by manufacturing, financial, and energy. Billings is the closest large city to the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota, and word is spreading of even larger new finds (via new technology) in the breaks starting about 50 miles north of Billings and stretching to the Canadian border.
The geography of the area shapes the city. Think of an hourglass that has tipped slightly to the right. The Yellowstone River rises in Yellowstone Park to the southeast by Idaho and heads to its’ confluence with the Missouri River in the far northwest by North Dakota. The Yellowstone River valley is generally flat, agricultural land, border on the south by the river and the north by the “Rimrocks”. This is a sandstone cliff that runs about 250 miles along the north side of the valley. Billings sits at the center of the hourglass where the two sides of the valley are pinched together before widening again as it heads north. Here are two pictures that tell the story. I took the first picture at the narrowest part of the hourglass, the top of the “Rims” looking southwest towards the Beartooth Range of the Rocky Mountains. Yellowstone National Park hides behind those snowcapped peaks (less than three hours away).
The buildings on the extreme left and right that bracket the downtown area are the two tallest buildings (20 + stories) in Montana (Crowne Plaza Hotel on the left, First Interstate Bank Tower on the right). The Yellowstone River is not visible, but runs along the base of the brown hills in the distance. In the Billings area, the valley runs from about 1 mile wide (where I’m standing on the cliffs) to 5-10 miles wide as you head up towards the mountains. It was harder to get the reverse view picture because the hills south of the river are not developed and I struggled to find a view point. You’ll be amused to know that the best shot came from right above the city landfill, looking to the northeast (also enjoy that I do not yet know how to incorporate “smell-a-vision” into my journal. Only I can truly enjoy the scents that went along with taking this picture!).
The downtown core shown in these pictures is all about banks, government, lawyers, and other professional services plus the huge medical complex that dominates the north end of the downtown area. There is one historical building, however, that is near and dear to my heart. The Parmly Billings Public Library was named after the son of Frederick Billings, the railroad mogul whose company founded the town (though he never lived here). The son did, and on his death they funded the building of the library. Up until I was in high school, this was the library, and for those of you not yet in puberty, that meant that I spent hours in the right basement of the building, using the card catalogs for research for speeches and papers, etc. I can still visualize the rows of yellow pine card catalogs (again for the youngsters, the paper equivalent of Google).
The other building of historical note that natives tell visitors about is the Moss Mansion. P.B. Moss was one of the early founding fathers, and had his fingers in everything from a bank, the newspaper, utility companies, packing plants, and the first telephone company in town. The house was built in 1901. I can’t tell you much else about it because, like most natives, I’ve never bothered to go inside! (It’s a museum now.) It’s telling that the history of Billings is one of conservatism and frugality (or cheapness, in the modern vernacular) as to the best of my knowledge there were no other mansions of this size or expense built in those early years…
My last picture is from downtown looking north past the city baseball field (home for Legion and sem-pro ball). I like this shot because it gives an idea of how the “Rims” dominate the north side of town. I was standing in one of the parking lots for the medical complex looking north.
Like most western towns that are about the business, downtown has virtually no retail as it is all on the west end. There is a large mall with all the usual suspects, and pretty every chain store (large and small) that you can imagine in the W. 24th and King Ave areas. Business is booming – there is new construction everywhere and unemployment hovers around 5%. Much of the servicing of the North Dakota oil boom is coming out of Billings, and because living conditions are so extreme up there, many workers are locating their families in Billings and driving up I-94 the four hours to work. To accommodate this, many companies provide free housing near the oilfields in barracks, etc., and schedule 16 hour days for two weeks straight and then give the employee a week off so they can go to Billings to see family. On the west coast we don’t hear much about this, but it’s a new version of the Wild, Wild West up in northeastern Montana and northwestern North Dakota these days. In any case, that’s my 2 cents about Billings. A great place to work and raise a family, not a tourist destination! But, what is a GREAT tourist destination is Yellowstone National Park, and that’s where I’m headed next!
Billings, MT to West Yellowstone, MT (I-90 to Livingston, US 89 to West Yellowstone, MT)
Leaving Billings, I head up I-90 west along the Yellowstone River for about 120 miles until at Livingston (another old railroad town); the river comes from a sharp turn to the right and cuts through the Absaroka Range of the Rockies in Rock Canyon. This canyon, only a couple of miles long, opens up into the Paradise Valley, which I follow for about 50 miles heading due south. This is a wide valley that used to be “real ranching” and now is a mix of real ranching and “ranchettes”, tourist homes on an acre or so that dot the valley, primarily along the river. We are slowly climbing and eventually enter Yankee Jim Canyon, which is a narrow gorge directly out of Gardiner, the town at the north (and original) entrance to Yellowstone Park. Now, I know that Yellowstone National Park is well known, and there are great quality pictures of all of the major tourist attractions, so I am only going to print pictures that perhaps are of things that you haven’t heard from or seen up close.
For example, this is a shot of the original entrance arch dedicated in 1872 by President Teddy Roosevelt. It’s made of the rocks taken from the Yellowstone River bed nearby, and carved at the top are the words “For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People.” It was built for carriages, of course, and so now is single lane only. You just wait your turn!
I know that people expect the obligatory pictures of wildlife and so here are a couple of those. This time of year the buffalo are somewhat on the move, but I saw four of the old bulls during the trip from Gardiner to West Yellowstone, majestic in their solitude in the meadows. (I think this guy’s name is Larry…)
The next picture depicts two of the more common species seen everywhere in the park. And I do mean everywhere: in the middle of the roads, clustering in groups on boardwalks, etc. There are elk (species cervus elapses americansus) and then the ubiquitous Japanese tourist ignoring park rules about approaching wild animals (species rudus pushus japanessus). Ok. I made the last species up…. Definitely not intending to be racist, but if you’ve ever been to Yellowstone you can draw your own conclusions…This was at Mammoth Hot Springs.
I shouldn’t be too judgmental – just off to the right the tour guide (with his little red flag) was holding back another 20 people with cameras clicking so as not to scare the elk. The jewel of the park Is Yellowstone Lake, source of the Yellowstone River. Here’s today’s lunch view!
The roads through the park are not yet all open; there is still a lot of snow at the top of the passes. I was last here 12 years ago, a couple of years after the devastating fires of 1998. National park policy is to NOT fight forest fires, but to preserve that natural order of things. I remember that they received a lot of criticism about this fire because of the decision to let it burn until the winter snows put it out. Here’s evidence of the resilience of Mother Nature. The first picture is that of an area burned in a fire two years ago. The second is an area that burned in 1998. There was no intervention (re: planting or re-seeding) after the 1998 fires, what you see is the natural regeneration of the forest. The trees are probably somewhere around 10 to 12 feet tall.
Tomorrow Augie and I head off into the area of the state that was the center of the gold rush, and then to what was once the world’s largest copper mine.
West Yellowstone, MT to Dillon, MT via Virginia City to Anaconda (US 287 to MT 287 to MT 41 to MT 278 to MT 43 to MT 569)
It snowed lightly last night so was a bit nippy this morning as we “broke camp” (that sounds so much sexier than unplugged and left!) and headed northwest. US 287 follows the Madison River out of the park as it heads north to Three Forks, MT, where it joins with the Jefferson and Gallatin Rivers to form the Missouri River. The view is of rolling meadows framed by towering snow-covered peaks until we near the canyon where the Madison cuts through from the Yellowstone plateau to the low lands. In August 1959 during the night our house in Billings shook enough to wake us up, dishes rattling, etc., as we experienced the effects of a catastrophic earthquake that was centered in Yellowstone National Park. Unknown to us until the next day, the earthquake resulted in half of a mountain sliding down into the Madison River Valley, killing 28 people and created the lake known today as Quake Lake. It’s quite eerie as the trunks of trees drowned in the lake 54 years ago still stick above the still waters. Again, two views from the same spot. The first looks north and you can see the scar on the mountainside where the land gave way as well as the earth that plugged the canyon. The second looks south, up the canyon towards Yellowstone Park. In both you can see the dead trees sticking out of the water.
The canyon ends just beyond the landslide and the valley opens up into the world-famous Madison River Valley, renowned for fishing (not something I have the patience for but even in the 30+ degree temperatures this morning there are people standing out in the water casting flies!). Southwestern Montana is a series of broad valleys bordered by mountain ranges with no foothills. As I leave the Madison River valley to cross over into the Alder Creek Valley to Virginia City, I look back to a spectacular view looking east.
Virginia City is the place that legends (and movies) were born: gold, vigilante justice, corrupt politics, etc. The gold in southwestern Montana was found in placer mines, which meant that it was in the gravel in the bottom of certain creeks. The gold in this vicinity was under Alder Creek. The mines quickly ran out of gold, but the legacy continues as the bed of the valley looks like a large egg carton, with small piles of mine tailings still, after all these years, not overgrown with brush. Virginia City itself survived and is still the county seat of Madison County. About 300 people live there year-round and it is now a prime tourist attraction.
The view above is from Boot Hill, the cemetery where the vigilantes hanged and buried the robbers. In the upper left you can see the Madison County Courthouse, built in 1876 and still in use. The main street is lined with well preserved buildings from that era.
On the right you can see one of the tours available to tourists waiting for customers!
Augie and I paused for a lunch break after leaving the Alder Creek Valley and then decided to change course. The original plan was to head north to Helena, capitol of Montana and home to Last Chance Gulch, one of the storied gold strikes in Montana history, but then I decided that I was too close to the location of a pivotal point in the Lewis and Clark expedition (one of my obsessions) and so we diverted to the south.
In this area of Southwestern Montana, the river systems resemble the root system of a large tree, with the roots all eventually gathering together at Three Forks to form the Missouri River. When Lewis and Clark were heading to the Pacific, they really did not know where they were going. The general plan was to follow the Missouri to its’ headwaters, and then strike west. The Native American guide Sacajawea was from the general area and they depended upon her for interpreting with the local tribes. However, once the expedition got to the place where the Missouri is formed from three roughly equally sized tributaries, there was a quandary as to which to take. The final decision was to take the western-most river and follow it as it, too, divided into smaller tributaries. The expedition was lost; following this small river up a broad valley surrounded with snowcapped mountains until one day they rounded a corner and saw this:
Sacajawea instantly recognized the rock formation as a landmark from her childhood, resembling a beaver head, and shortly thereafter the expedition met up with her brother’s tribe and the rest, as they say, is history!
The main town in this area of Montana is Dillon, a small agricultural center and home to what is now called the University of Montana-Western. The Montana University system originally consisted of two landmark universities (the University of Montana in Missoula and Montana State University in Bozeman) with three smaller colleges designed to serve the more remote (at that time) areas of the state. Western Montana College was original founded in Dillon to provide teacher training. It is a small but distinctive campus with some impressive architecture. Here are two of the main buildings.
Memorial Day weekend will see us in the Butte area, past home to the richest copper mine in the world (at the time). On the way from Dillon to Butte I swing around through one of the most beautiful places on earth, the Big Hole River Valley. Isolated between towering ranges of snow-capped mountains, the wide valley is a cattle ranching area. This, of course, gave rise to my experience with a Montana traffic jam!
Nothing quite like the smell of cow poop cooking on the exhaust pipe!
Next up: The Final Chapter
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