Montana's Magic City — the Rimrocks rise 150 metres above the city on sandstone cliffs, the Little Bighorn battlefield is 100 km east, and Billings sits at the gateway to Yellowstone with the best steakhouses between Denver and Seattle
Billings is Montana's largest city — a prosperous energy and agricultural hub on the Yellowstone River at the base of the Rimrocks, the sandstone escarpment that rises abruptly 150 metres above the city's north edge. The Rimrocks (officially the Rimrock Formation) provide Billings with one of the most dramatic urban backdrops of any American city of its size — accessible via a network of trails from downtown, the clifftop Rimrock Trail has unobstructed views across the Yellowstone Valley, the Beartooth Range (Wyoming), and the distant Absaroka Mountains. The Little Bighorn Battlefield Nationa…
The Yellowstone River valley was the heart of Crow Nation territory (Apsáalooke homeland) for centuries — the Crow were buffalo hunters and traders who maintained a difficult neutrality between the Lakota to the east and the US Army to the west. Billings was founded in 1882 as a railroad town on the Northern Pacific Railway's mainline route — Frederick Billings, the railroad's president, named it after himself. The 1882 land rush (the 'Magic City of the Plains' was incorporated in a single year) and subsequent cattle drives made Billings the commercial capital of the Yellowstone watershed. Th…