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The Hub of Montana

By: Steven Rinnella

Traveling around Montana by car, it’s easy to look out the window and make an accurate guess about what types of commerce drive the bulk of an area’s economy. It’s usually one or two things, logging and mining or agriculture, together with greater or lesser amounts of tourism. In other places, the ghost towns of Buffalo and Moccasin, Montana, for instance, it’s easy to tell the one thing that used to drive the town but that doesn’t work anymore, like an abandoned rail line.
Billings, Montana, which happened to begin as a Northern Pacific rail town itself in 1882, is a total exception to this rule. It’s a cow town that moves 150 million dollars’ worth of livestock through the city’s Public Auction Yards. It has a skyline of high rises and giant smoke stacks and flaming burn-off torches that betray oil refineries. It’s the medical center of the Northern Great Plains. With two interstate highways, rail lines in every direction and an international airport, Billings is also the hub of finance, trade, and merchandise for 125,000 square miles, one of the largest trading areas in the nation. Billings is Montana’s largest city, with a population that doubles every thirty years. And, finally, it’s the only place in Montana where you’re going to catch a large stadium concert and it remains Montana’s one hope for a future major league sports team.
Right now, Billings has a population of about 100,000 people. By eastern standards, that doesn’t seem like that much. But once you consider the emptiness of the surroundings areas it becomes surprising that that many people ever gathered in one place. Montana was settled sort of in reverse, from the west to the east, and many places around there still look a lot like they did a couple hundred years ago. At the Pictographs State Park in Billings, things look even older than that. The park serves to protect and make available to the public three caves that have over a hundred painting made by prehistoric hunters about 10,000 years ago. One theory about ancient cave paintings is that they coincide in time with the massive die-offs of animals that occurred at the end of the last ice age, as if the art was an attempt to summon vanishing herds.
Another culture’s final attempt to save vanishing herds and a dying way of life is memorialized just south of Billings, near Hardin, Montana. The Little Bighorn Battlefield still looks just about the way it did on June 25, 1876, when Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors under the leadership of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse annihilated the 7th Cavalry. Small white tombstones and markers are scattered singly and in small clusters along the prairie from the river up to Last Stand Hill, where General Custer’s body was found. It can be literally overwhelming to stand on that hill and contemplate the soldiers who died there and the Plains Indians who rode away from what would become an empty victory. Only a few years later the last large, free-ranging herd of Buffalo was shot down along the Yellowstone River to the east of Billings, near Miles City, Montana.
While the landscape immediately around Billings typifies the rolling Northern Plains, the southern horizon is made up of the Pryor, Beartooth, and Bighorn ranges, and the Bulls, Snowys, Crazys, and Absarokas are visible from the rim rocks above town on a clear day. Far below is the gently curving Yellowstone River, all lined with cottonwoods. The constantly evolving city of Billings spreads up from the river banks. Billings has plenty of diversity for the traveler, which is made evident by the variety and numbers of places to stay. There are cheap, no-frills highway motels and even some no-tell motels. Others are more self-conscious, offering renditions of Cowboy West and stuffy Victorian elegance. And there are some nice downtown hotels with a more modern, urban feel and convenient locations for hitting the town.
There are also enough festivals throughout the year to make a complete renaissance man out of anyone who attended even half of them. Just a small sample: Montana Agri-Trade Exposition, Clark Day at Pompey’s Pillar, Theatre in the Park, Billings Hispanic Fiesta, Billings Riverfest, Festival of Cultures, Taste of Billings, Montana Outdoor Recreation Exposition, Montana Seniors Olympics, and enough rodeos and pow-wows to make a person hope that he or she never sees another pair of skin-tight wranglers again.
Between festivals there are a few stops that anyone visiting Billings should check out. The Preston Moss Mansion is an immaculately restored home that was built in 1903 for Moss, one of the West’s wealthiest men. When it was built it cost 40 times the average price of a new home. The Western Heritage Center is a source of pride for Billings, and roadside camping buffs can even visit the nation’s first KOA campground. For more cosmopolitan tastes there is the Alberta Bair Theatre, offering everything from symphony concerts and ballet to children’s theatre and jazz. When the show lets out Billings has plenty of dining and live music. Juliano’s is a favorite restaurant of locals, and the Rex is a happening bar with an outdoor courtyard and fire pit. On the long summer evenings you can kick back outside at the Rex and do a little people watching. Within minutes you’ll know that Billings is a lot more than an old railroad cow town.