Things to Do in Billings in May

The sandstone cliffs along Billings' north edge make this city unlike anywhere else in the American West. May is the month to be on them. The prairie grass has greened up below. The cliffs catch evening light and shift through amber into something near red. This combination creates a landscape that stops you mid-stride. Boothill Cemetery perches on the rim with views across the Yellowstone Valley. Three or four visitors tend to appear on a May morning. The Kelly Mountain trail system offers loops ranging from 2 to 8 miles (3.2 to 12.9 km). Enough variety exists for everything from a short walk to a half-day outing. Morning and late afternoon are the right times. Midday UV at 3,123 ft (952 m) elevation is harder than it looks on paper. The light is better at the edges of the day anyway.

65 miles southeast of Billings on I-90 E, the Crow Reservation rolls past your windshield in exactly one hour under normal traffic. Suddenly the landscape opens, wide, brutal, and you grasp the scale of June 1876. May turns the battlefield grasslands an impossible green. Wind moves in long waves. No crowds. Rangers walk the terrain with you, no tour bus breathing down their necks in 12 minutes. Two memorials anchor the site: the older Custer monument and the 2003 Indian Memorial. Both demand extended time. Crow Nation guides read the battle differently than military textbooks, and their version will rewrite what you carry home. Block three to four hours. Minimum.

Twenty-eight miles (45 km) east of Billings on I-94, a 150-foot (46 m) sandstone butte punches straight up from the Yellowstone River bottomlands. Carved into its face: William Clark's signature and the date July 25, 1806, the only surviving physical evidence of the Lewis and Clark Expedition you can still see on the actual landscape. The climb is short, 0.25 miles (400 m) round trip on a boardwalk, and the cottonwood groves below the riverbank will keep you longer once you come down. May turns this stretch into active bird migration territory, orioles, warblers, and various shorebirds flood the bottomlands in numbers that make even casual birdwatchers stop walking. The interpretive center usually has staff who want to talk about the place. You'll plan a quick stop and burn two hours here.

Montana guides will tell you May is when the Yellowstone gets serious. They're right. The spring runoff from the Absaroka Range typically clears by mid-May, when it does, the salmonfly hatch arrives. These large orange-and-black stoneflies blanket riverside vegetation and drive trout into feeding frenzies that border on reckless. Anglers plan around this window months ahead. The Yellowstone runs free for 678 miles (1,091 km), undammed, rare these days. Stretches accessible from Billings offer both wade fishing on gravel bars and guided float trips through canyon stretches where the river drops between basalt walls. Even on cloudy May mornings, with cold water and wet willows in the air and current pushing hard against your waders, this river sticks with you.

Three caves in a sandstone cliff face, seven miles (11 km) south of downtown Billings, hold rock art spanning roughly 2,000 years of continuous human presence. The pictographs: humans, bison, geometric patterns painted in red, white, and black. They're some of the best-preserved prehistoric art in the Northern Plains. Here's what surprises visitors, this is an active archaeological site. Excavations have revealed evidence of occupation going back at least 4,000 years, with artifacts from people who used this canyon long before the paintings. The main loop trail is 0.75 miles (1.2 km). May is one of the more pleasant months to walk it. The rattlesnakes that emerge later in summer are still quiet. The canyon is cool in the morning shade. You'll likely have it largely to yourself.

Downtown Billings never tried to be charming, and that is why it is. The place still works: ranching, energy, healthcare, the blocks show it. You cannot fake that grit. The Western Heritage Center on Montana Avenue squats inside a 1901 Romanesque railroad depot. The building alone justifies the stop. Inside, permanent exhibits track Yellowstone River Plains history with Crow, Northern Cheyenne, and Lakota depth you will not find in gift-shop form. Three blocks north, the Yellowstone Art Museum fills a converted 1903 county jail with contemporary Montana and Western American pieces. Visitors arrive expecting cowboy kitsch. They leave startled. Come May, downtown swells every Friday night. Galleries unlock doors late, breweries and distilleries within walking distance pour pints, and Main Street turns into an impromptu corridor of art and beer. It is not Missoula's scene, but it is livelier than the city's reputation admits.