billingsgriz
Well-known member
No, TNT, a few people do live year around in Cooke City and Silver Gate on The Beartooth Highway and, according to you and other folks that are geographically challenged, in "Eastern Montana," and everyone else that can read a map and that have been there, in Southcentral Montana on The Montana-Wyoming border.
And these folks, who in the winter can only leave Cooke City and Silver Gate in a car, pickup, or SUV by driving through Yellowstone National Park to Gardiner at Yellowstone's North Entrance, a road the National Park Servce keeps open year around at it is the only park entrance open year around, live in Montana's highest elevation towns at altitudes of 7,605 and 7,593 feet repectively, not bad for living in "Eastern Montana !!!" (The third highest town in Montana, Big Sky at 7,491 feet is also in "Eastern Montana,"according to you and a few other geographically- challenged folks west of the divide, and Southcentral Montana to the rest of us. For the record, Cooke City, Silver Gate, and Big Sky are almost 1,000 feet higher than Logan Pass on Going to The Sun, the highest point on that spectatcular highway at 6,600 feet.)
I love Western Montana--Flathead Lake, The Missions, Bitterroots, and especially Glacier National Park, which I think truly is the "Crown of the Continent, and has unsurpassed beauty !"
But over here in "Eastern Montana," we also have a lttle scenery on The Beartooth Highway and we have our own little park called Yellowstone. While most of Yellowstone is in NW Wyoming, 10% of the park, over 200,000 acres of it is in Montana, including 3 of the 5 entrances and such famous features as The Roosevelt Arch, dedicated by Teddy Rossevelt just outside Gardiner almost 110 years ago to be the ceremonial and symbolic entrance to Yellowstone.
As BGF, rimrock Griz, and kemajic have noted, there is a lot of scenery close to Billings which along with Red Lodge, serves as the gateway to the beautiful and picturesque Beartooth Highway, which leads to Yellowstone's Northeast Entrance at Silver Gate, at the end of that highway. While the other four entrances to Yellowstone are also very scenic, The Beartooth Highway is un-matched in its grandeur of snowcapped Beartooth peaks, alpine tundra, spectacular views, and over 200 lakes in the adjoining Beartooth-Absaroka Wilderness area, all one million acres of it, some of them right next to the highway.
And to east of Billings, what most people call accurately Eastern Montana, we have the most famous battlefield in The West, The Little Big Horn National Monument, and the only known existing evidence of The Lewis and Clark Expedition at Pompey's Pillar National Mounument.
And I for one love the badlands around Terry, Jordan and Glendive, and The Missouri Breaks National Mounument, Fort Peck, and The Big Horn Canyon National Recreation Area outside of Hardin in SE Montana in the beautiful Big Horn Canyon. The badlands beauty is stark and harsh, but their wind and water eroded shapes and different colored clays can be quite spectacular, so much so that in North Dakota, their badlands form Theodore Roosevelt National Park at Medora.
As BGF noted and I agree, I love Montana from border to border, but I do get tired of a few folks west of The Divide telling me how ugly it is east of the divide--at least a few of those folks have never even been east of the divide, and many others maybe once or twice !!!
And these folks, who in the winter can only leave Cooke City and Silver Gate in a car, pickup, or SUV by driving through Yellowstone National Park to Gardiner at Yellowstone's North Entrance, a road the National Park Servce keeps open year around at it is the only park entrance open year around, live in Montana's highest elevation towns at altitudes of 7,605 and 7,593 feet repectively, not bad for living in "Eastern Montana !!!" (The third highest town in Montana, Big Sky at 7,491 feet is also in "Eastern Montana,"according to you and a few other geographically- challenged folks west of the divide, and Southcentral Montana to the rest of us. For the record, Cooke City, Silver Gate, and Big Sky are almost 1,000 feet higher than Logan Pass on Going to The Sun, the highest point on that spectatcular highway at 6,600 feet.)
I love Western Montana--Flathead Lake, The Missions, Bitterroots, and especially Glacier National Park, which I think truly is the "Crown of the Continent, and has unsurpassed beauty !"
But over here in "Eastern Montana," we also have a lttle scenery on The Beartooth Highway and we have our own little park called Yellowstone. While most of Yellowstone is in NW Wyoming, 10% of the park, over 200,000 acres of it is in Montana, including 3 of the 5 entrances and such famous features as The Roosevelt Arch, dedicated by Teddy Rossevelt just outside Gardiner almost 110 years ago to be the ceremonial and symbolic entrance to Yellowstone.
As BGF, rimrock Griz, and kemajic have noted, there is a lot of scenery close to Billings which along with Red Lodge, serves as the gateway to the beautiful and picturesque Beartooth Highway, which leads to Yellowstone's Northeast Entrance at Silver Gate, at the end of that highway. While the other four entrances to Yellowstone are also very scenic, The Beartooth Highway is un-matched in its grandeur of snowcapped Beartooth peaks, alpine tundra, spectacular views, and over 200 lakes in the adjoining Beartooth-Absaroka Wilderness area, all one million acres of it, some of them right next to the highway.
And to east of Billings, what most people call accurately Eastern Montana, we have the most famous battlefield in The West, The Little Big Horn National Monument, and the only known existing evidence of The Lewis and Clark Expedition at Pompey's Pillar National Mounument.
And I for one love the badlands around Terry, Jordan and Glendive, and The Missouri Breaks National Mounument, Fort Peck, and The Big Horn Canyon National Recreation Area outside of Hardin in SE Montana in the beautiful Big Horn Canyon. The badlands beauty is stark and harsh, but their wind and water eroded shapes and different colored clays can be quite spectacular, so much so that in North Dakota, their badlands form Theodore Roosevelt National Park at Medora.
As BGF noted and I agree, I love Montana from border to border, but I do get tired of a few folks west of The Divide telling me how ugly it is east of the divide--at least a few of those folks have never even been east of the divide, and many others maybe once or twice !!!
