Experience the best of Billings

Billings stands on the Yellowstone River in south-central Montana, below the Rimrocks, a rim of pale sandstone cliffs that rises along the northern edge of town. The city grew with the railway in the 1880s and was soon known as the Magic City for the speed of its growth. It remains the largest city in Montana and the commercial centre of a huge ranching, farming and oil region, and Moss Mansion, a Romanesque house of 1903, shows the wealth of the early years.

Pictograph Cave State Park, on the south-eastern edge of the city, preserves rock paintings made over thousands of years, and Pompeys Pillar National Monument, east of the city, is a sandstone butte where William Clark carved his name in 1806 on the return of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The Little Bighorn Battlefield, where Custer's cavalry was defeated in 1876, lies farther south-east, and the Beartooth Highway climbs from Red Lodge toward Yellowstone.

Beef and bison dominate the menus, with steaks, burgers and huckleberry desserts, and rodeo is part of local life. Warm chinook winds can break the winter cold for a few days at a time, and summers are dry under a huge sky.