I love Billings Montana. No it’s not my hometown, which will
always be Omaha Nebraska, but Billings is my home now, and I couldn’t be more
grateful to live in this beautiful place.
Billings doesn’t get enough credit.
It’s often overlooked as merely a place to fly into, or gear up before
heading off to Western Montana where all of the mountains and beautiful
national parks and forests are located. Even the city slogan “Montana’s
Trailhead” implies that Billings is just a convenient starting point and not
the final destination. Granted, few
places on earth can stand out from the long shadows cast by Yellowstone and
Glacier national parks, and being relatively close to those places is what
attracted my wife and I to Billings in the first place. But Billings is it’s
own place, and has it’s own charm that goes beyond it’s proximity to beautiful
places.
Billings the biggest city in Montana and it’s the only city
in Montana that really feels like a city and not a college town or resort
community. It actually has a city culture, complete with all the hustle and
bustle that Montana can offer. It has a real downtown, where business goes
down, and not just shopping like some of the more touristy downtowns of Montana.
It’s a beer town. Downtown Billings has
6 micro-breweries and two distilleries, with more popping up across the
city. There is a great food culture to
go with all of our beer too, with everything from artisan fine dining, to
street food, and a massive seasonal farmer’s market. There are several ethnic restaurants,
including Japanese, Chinese, Mexican, Thai and Montana’s only Indian
restaurant.
Beyond food and commerce, the natural geography of Billings
is quite pretty too. In this photo you
can see downtown Billings and the Yellowstone river valley behind it, followed
by the Pryor Mountains even further in the distance. To the West we have a view of the Beartooth
Mountains, while the North and East are encircled by the cliffs of the Billings
Rims. The weather is mild, sitting in a
bowl that borders on arid prairie and badlands to the East and the Rocky
Mountains on the West, we’re sheltered from the extremes. For all of these reasons and more, it’s no
wonder that the population of Billings is growing fast, attracting over twice
as many newcomers per year than any other city in Montana. I was sold on Billings right away just
because of the proximity to the Beartooth Mountains, Yellowstone, Glacier, and
all of the mountain wilderness of the West.
But the city of Billings has grown on me too and I don’t think there’s
any other place I’d rather live in Montana. www.paulbellinger.com
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