Montana passages

Sunrise in Wibaux on the North Dakota border

Terrain and scenery will vary in a state the size of Germany. Montana assures that. Only islands of the state’s signature mountains lie east of Billings. This venture into Montana started unlike any other, a quiet crossroads in Alzada in the state’s far southeast corner. 

As the crow flies, Alzada was just a few miles from South Dakota, but no roads cross the border as there are no major cities. It easily qualifies as one of the most remote state borders. The Black Hills ceded to the farmland and rocky hills of southeast Montana. This could have been anywhere on the northern plains as a few hundred people constituted a metropolis out here. 

 At dusty Ekalaka, a series of pockmarked hoodoos rise close to the road. These are the Medicine Rocks, protected by a state park and once admired by Theodore Roosevelt. I had the rocks on my itinerary, but the heat of the day made hiking in the exposed terrain unpalatable. 

 Baker seemed a healthy little town of 1,800 people, sitting on the edge of natural gas and oil deposits. South of downtown sat an unexpectedly lake, built for the railroads to refill their boilers 130 years ago. I stopped for a cold-brew coffee at Compass Coffee, a nice community gathering space. In this sparsely populated corner of Montana, most counties have only a town or two. 

Wibaux is no different, a thatch of 500 people, the last town on the interstate before the North Dakota line. The tiny ranching town lies along Beaver Creek, namesake of the Beaver Creek Brewery, one of the nation’s most far-flung craft breweries. Beaver Creek runs a taproom and connects to the Gem Restaurant. The brewery was relatively quiet, so I mostly talked with the bartender and another employee. Fact I learned – in Montana you can work in a bar/taproom/restaurant and serve alcohol at age 18, as the bartender would not turn 21 till later this year. 

For dessert, I stopped at the Tastee Hut for a soft-serve cone and watch the sink upon the flattest horizon I have seen. 

By 5 a.m., I readied for my long birthday transit across Montana. The heat abated and I rolled all the windows down to enjoy the 60-degree air. Almost 250 miles away, Billings served as the only landmark, as most cities out this far topped out at a few thousand people. The Yellowstone River would jog and in out all the way to Livingston. 

The first 100 miles slipped away. Glendive has little of note outside of a bait-and-switch dinosaur museum that actually touts creationism and was founded by the family of the current governor. 

Sunflowers and swarms of insects

But the sun brought insects of the prairie. By Miles City, the plague of grasshoppers turned my windshield and front bumper yellow. I knew better than to try to use washer fluid and the wipers. I stopped for a coffee and a jalapeno cheddar breakfast sandwich at City Brew (a fine Montana coffeeshop chain). The stops slowed down after Pompey’s Pillar. I felt like pressing on. Billings became a casualty. 

Instead, I eyed Bozeman. I shouldn’t have. I have many good memories of Bozeman, but the Bozeman I encountered today reeked of congested traffic, coastal transplants and mobs of tourists headed to Glacier or Yellowstone national parks. There was construction everywhere that seemed too much for its congested streets. I made a stop at Rosauer’s awe-inspiring beer section for some Montana craft beer to bring home, but otherwise plowed onto Butte. 

Fine brews in Anaconda

Rushing to Butte didn't get me ahead; I couldn’t check into the hotel yet. That meant more wandering.

After Grant-Kohrs Ranch and its picturesque herds grazing in Deer Lodge, Anaconda beckoned. On an August Friday, the former copper smelting town of Anaconda boomed anew. Boutique, modern hotels rose on the edge of town. The Anaconda Copper smokestack still loomed 500 feet above the city recovering from its mining heritage. 

Downtown was situated upon a pair of east-west one-way streets filled with people. I stopped at Smelter City Brewing for a few craft brews and some bluegrass to decompress from the long day of driving. 

I could have stayed here were it not for a reservation in Butte. Rain came in and wiped away the heat wave for a night. I was prepared not to enjoy Butte, but the town has a charm. 

Butte reminds me of home, by which I mean Cleveland. Both are wounded towns, soldiering on as industry has fled them. A bartender told me there that 400 miles of mapped mine tunnels crisscross under the city. Butte has one of the nation’s largest historic districts, as its downtown was built during the era of the Copper Kings, when mining wealth poured out of the town. 

If only we could focus solely upon Butte’s historic district and vintage buildings. We cannot. 

The historic district stops cold where neighborhoods once existed. The east side of town was swallowed by the Berkeley Pit, the enormous open-pit copper mine. Since 2019, a water treatment plan has operated to treat the toxic water that flooded the abandoned mine after the pumps were turned off in the 1980s. Loaded with heavy metals and chemicals, the water is dangerously acidic, and has caused several incidents with migrating birds. It’s rare to see people live in close proximity to a mine, especially the largest Superfund site in the country. 

But Butte endures, even as people routinely given the town a hard time. A toughness comes with that proximity. The town boasts a handful of breweries, and I went for Butte Brewing, as it revived the name of a pre-Prohibition brewery. They had a wide variety of styles, but after two sips a honey cream ale became my immediate favorite. 

 The rain stayed with central Montana for my entire drive to Helena, a 70-mile jaunt up the interstate. After three days of excessive mileage, I earned a break around the state capital. Helena remains a small town, with the business along a few major roads, the capital district and well-kept neighborhoods. 

 Driving in Montana at night … I cannot recommend. My last day began with a 4:15 start in Helena. Not 10 minutes into the drive, the pavement turned to gravel in a construction zone along the west short of Canyon Ferry Lake. The drive ended miles later after many curves, all of it at 35 mph.

The mountains hid first light and at Townsend, the first belt of fog arrived. Townsend sits on the Missouri River, and the road follows the Missouri up from its formation at Three Forks. Reaching the interstate in the Gallatin Valley did not help, as highway and the rivers crossed enough that I passed through a series of fog banks.

The mountains cast a haze as daylight grew. I looked upon Bozeman and all its new development, the bland condo and apartment complexes that have been smeared across every thriving town in the country. It made me think of my visits to see my friend Athens, to chatting with locals, record store guys and anyone who might pass along Main Street. That Bozeman no longer exists, but the memories stay vivid. 

The fog situation would not improve across Bozeman Pass, as Livingston lies at the Yellowstone River’s eastward bend. Between rows of fog then the sun cutting right into my eyes, I took in sightswhere I could.  The Crazy Mountains glowed in the dawn. The jagged island range rises 7,000 feet above the plains that roll east past Melville, the one-stop town I always plan to revisit and never do. The town even has a restaurant, Café 191, but I could not work out a stop. I enjoyed the Crazy range even as I spotted the next patch of low-lying fog across the Yellowstone. 

Every time I stop in Montana, I get overwhelmed by the enormity, by everything I won’t see. This trip lost many stops along the way, from Big Hole National Battlefield to Medicine Rocks to Sidney. Sometimes trying to wedge in too many stops backfires. 

After my seventh visit, I still need to see the Bitterroot Valley, drive the Hi Line across the enduring northern towns connected by U.S. Route 2, check out the northwest reaches of Libby and Yaak, plus stop in Lewiston for the chokecherry festival. 

As it always goes in Montana for a non-native, those trips will take a while.

See you again, Crazy Range