Travel
Montana
By
Mike McCoy
Stockmen take over the reins of Billings during the annual Northern
International Livestock Exposition, scheduled to kick up the
dust at the Magic City's MetraPark Arena October 13 through 16. For nearly
four decades, NILE has celebrated the Western way through an array of activities,
and the Expo's Buckfest, one of the later stops on the road to December's National
Finals Rodeo, brings in some of the sport's best.
Paradoxically, the Treasure State's largest city is gateway to some of its
most lonesome geography.
You're
probably itching to get out of the former and into
the latter, but first stop in at the Yellowstone
Art Museum to inspect the superlative
Charles M. Bair Collection of Western and Native American
Art, showing through January 16, 2005. On permanent
display is A Western Icon: The Stories and Illustrations
of Will James, including paintings, manuscripts, and
personal effects of one of the most significant Western
artists and writers of the early 20th century.
After
procuring a good highway map and stocking up on gas,
food, and water, find your way off Interstate 90 at
exit 452 and onto the Pryor Creek Road. The byway dips
and twists southward through a mesmerizing terrain
of crumbling cliffs, broad hayfields, and low buttes
embellished with scattered stands of pine. At the Crow
Indian Reservation village of Pryor, pull up to Chief
Plenty Coups State Park, the burial
place of the last great war chief of the Crows. Rising
roughly six miles to the south are the Castle Rocks
of the Pryor Range, where the remains of ancestral
Crows lie, and where still today young warriors go
to seek spiritual guidance.
From
Pryor take the long and lonely (but paved) road east
to Saint Xavier, and then travel north and east to
the Crow Agency and Little
Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.
Here, in late June of 1876, Lt. Col. George Armstrong
Custer and his 7th Cavalry lost their lives in a bloody
battle with the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota Sioux
warriors. A recent addition to the park is the stirring,
long-overdue Indian Memorial honoring the braves who
fought so gallantly here. The Custer Battlefield Museum
resides in the nearby settlement of Garryowen, named
for the familiar Irish tune Custer favored as a marching
song. Among the museum's large collection is the signature
of the Hunkpapa Lakota leader Tatanka-Iyotanka, better
known as Sitting Bull, on a contract for his appearance
in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.
On
your way back to Billings detour north from Interstate
90 to Pompeys Pillar
National Monument. The solitary, 150-foot-high
sandstone mesa holds the etched signature of Capt.
William Clark, dated July 25, 1806. It's the only known
physical evidence of the Corps of Discovery remaining
along the entire Lewis and Clark National Historic
Trail.
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