Some places keep their history neatly behind glass. Southeast Montana is not one of them. Here, the past is part of the landscape—from the remains of an early river town and inscriptions carved into sandstone to badlands that hold evidence of creatures that lived millions of years ago.
Travel across the region and you'll find traces of the people, places and stories that came before. Some are preserved in museums. Others are still right where history left them. Here are a few places to experience Southeast Montana's past for yourself.
Before Billings, there was Coulson
Established along the Yellowstone River in the late 1800s, Coulson was once a bustling river town with saloons, stores, hotels and other businesses. But when the Northern Pacific Railroad chose a site a couple of miles away for its new town, residents and businesses began moving toward what would become Billings. Eventually, Coulson all but disappeared.
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Today, Coulson Park occupies part of the former townsite. Walk the undeveloped riverfront and it takes a little imagination to picture the community that once stood here.
One piece of Coulson is harder to erase: nearby Boothill Cemetery, one of the few tangible reminders of the old river town. Standing among the graves, knowing an entire community once existed close by, gives this corner of Billings an entirely different feel—and a connection to the community that came before it.
Find history written in stone
Wind and weather have spent thousands of years shaping Medicine Rocks State Park into arches, holes, towers and other unusual formations that rise unexpectedly from the prairie. People, too, have left their mark. Historic inscriptions can still be seen in the sandstone, offering traces of those who traveled through the area long ago.
By day, wander among the formations, hike or bike the park’s trails and explore a landscape unlike almost anywhere else in Southeast Montana. Stay for nightfall, when this International Dark Sky Sanctuary offers another reason to linger: exceptionally dark skies over a landscape shaped by time.
Explore what time left behind at Makoshika
If centuries of human history aren’t old enough for you, Southeast Montana can take you much farther back. Outside Glendive, the story goes back about 65 million years. Makoshika State Park is filled with badlands formations, cap rocks, hoodoos and fossil remains of Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops and other prehistoric creatures.
Start at the visitor center, where fossil and interpretive displays introduce the park’s ancient past. Then head into the park by road or trail through terrain sculpted into some of Southeast Montana’s most distinctive shapes.
The creatures whose remains have been discovered in these badlands vanished millions of years before people walked this landscape. Yet evidence of the world they inhabited is still here—another layer of Southeast Montana's past waiting to be discovered.
Step into Miles City’s past
In Miles City, much of the Old West isn't gone—it's been preserved. The Range Riders Museum sits on the site of the 1876 Fort Keogh cantonment and houses thousands of artifacts related to ranching, military history, Indigenous cultures and early life in Southeast Montana. Visitors can step inside historic buildings, explore a recreated frontier Main Street and put names and stories to some of the people who shaped the region.
There’s a lot to explore here, from saddles, wagons and antique vehicles to ranching tools, pioneer furnishings and other pieces of everyday life. Some of the exhibits are historic buildings themselves, including log cabins and a country school. Together, the museum’s buildings and collections offer more than a timeline of the past—they give visitors a sense of how people lived, worked and traveled in this part of Montana. Give yourself time to wander; sometimes the smallest pieces of history tell the most interesting stories.
Travel Tip: The museum is generally open April 15 through October 15, six days a week (closed Tuesdays), and by appointment at other times.
And for those who like a little mystery...
Of course, not every story from Southeast Montana's past stays neatly in the past. The Kempton Hotel in Terry, Moss Mansion in Billings and O'Fallon Historical Museum in Baker have all inspired tales of unexplained footsteps, apparitions and other eerie encounters over the years.
If you're looking for the region's more mysterious side, explore our past haunted-history blogs for local legends, ghost stories and historic places with stories of their own.
In Southeast Montana, you don't have to look far to find the past. Sometimes it's preserved in a museum. Sometimes it's written in stone, buried in the badlands or found along the banks of the Yellowstone. You just have to slow down long enough to notice it.
