Billings, Montana, United States
I considered going up into the Pryor Mountains for some
hikes to “ice caves”, but the intel I received from the ranger station at
Bighorn Canyon was that, although the unpaved road into the mountains was open
most of the way and passable for regular vehicles, the hikes up to the caves
were still in deep snow. I decided to leave them for another trip to eastern
Montana.
My last planned stop on this trip was Billings, with a population
around 110,000 the largest city in Montana.
I’ve passed through Billings several times on the interstate between Colorado
and places west in Montana but never stopped to see what was there.
The one time I did get off the highway was way back in 1995
when I took a trip north from Colorado to meet up with my brother who had some
business in Billings. After our touring
to Yellowstone I dropped him off at what has to be one of the more scenically
located airports in the country, on top of a flat mesa several hundred feet
above the city. Maybe a more accurate
description would be atop the valley walls since at Billings the Yellowstone
River Valley is several miles wide but sided to both north and south by higher
ground bordered in some spots by steep cliffs.
Overall it makes for a quite scenic location even if not as dramatic as
western cities closer to high mountain ranges.
Billings is probably the Montana city that most resembles
typical middle American cities, with a few tall modern buildings downtown and
industrial zones on its south and east sides that include an oil refinery. One
thing you can tell about Billings is that there was some level of prosperity
and growth in the 1960s and 1970s that passed by other towns in Montana. While the historic buildings along Main
Street in Bozeman are mostly intact, those is Billings have largely been
replaced by modern buildings and lots of parking lots of mid-twentieth century “urban
renewal”. It reminds me somewhat of Denver which underwent a similar
modernization in that era but on a much smaller scale in Billings. There are some
historic buildings around downtown, but unfortunately many of the more
grandiose ones like the former Yellowstone County Courthouse have been replaced
by boxy modern ones.
I have to admit I was expecting somewhat more of downtown
Billings. The Western Heritage Center is
a regional historical museum in an impressive former library building, but it’s
collections really aren’t that large.
And I decided to save $15 and not enter the Yellowstone Art Museum when
I discovered from the front desk that there was no permanent collection but
only several temporary exhibitions of contemporary art on display. Maybe the
best things about the extended area around downtown is the Billings Brewery
Trail, a extended walk around the downtown area and east side that takes in
almost a dozen breweries, cideries, and distilleries.
Over two nights in town I sampled the produce
at several – Montana Brewing Company, Thirsty Street Brewing Company, Uberbrew,
and Angry Hank’s, but I have several more to check out when I return to town.
In Billings I’ve been told that the West Side is the nice
part of town, “the right side of the tracks” one might say. The town’s most
famous attraction is on the near west side within walking distance from
downtown. The Moss Mansion Museum is
considered Montana’s grandest home. Built in 1903 by Preston Moss, one of Billings
leading citizens in its early years, the mansion was designed by the same
architect, Henry Hardenbergh, who designed the Plaza Hotel, Waldorf Astoria, Dakota,
and some other of New York City’s most famous buildings of the era. It also
remained the family home until the mid-1980s. While the public rooms of the
first floor are quite ornate with dark wooden walls and Moorish influences, it’s
notable how modest the furnishings in the private bedroom spaces upstairs are
for such a wealthy family.
My other main Billings attraction was ZooMontana, the only
officially recognized zoo in the state, on the city’s modern western
outskirts.
Well, as far as zoos go, it’s
pretty modest, and an hour and a half was plenty for me to walk the whole
things and spend some time with each animal.
Most of the residents are North American species, especially those of
the Rocky Mountain region, the primary exception being an Asian section with an
Amur (Siberian) Tiger, some Red Pandas, and a Golden Takin.
I planned to take in a few last sites in the morning before
leaving Billings, but the weather changed from what had been forecast earlier
and it quickly became cold and rainy, poor conditions for hiking around Pictographs
Cave State Park or heading up to “The Rims” the mesa balcony near the airport
from which views over the city are supposedly great. I’ll have to leave those for another time I’m
in eastern Montana.
2025-05-22