Recently, western Montana and cities like Bozeman have been experiencing a surge in popularity due to the hugely successful drama “Yellowstone” and its prequels “1883” and “1923.”
But some of the most intriguing places in Montana are those that remain untouched by the limelight.
Hi-Line is one of them. This is the stretch of US Highway 2 that crosses northern Montana for about 650 miles.
Far and wide, this part of Montana is a place where rows of golden wheat fields recede into endless horizons; where a long two-lane highway is dotted with grain elevators, railroad tracks and centuries-old homesteading remains; and where you can pass a welcome sign that reads: “RUDYARD: 596 Nice People — 1 Old Sore Head!”
In May, I took the Hi-Line for a three-day road trip to explore the section between the towns of Shelby, to the west, and Malta, to the east. This 190-mile expanse was once shortgrass prairie — until the 1890s, when the Great Northern Railroad, under the leadership of James Hill, laid steel tracks across the open plains. Settlers soon followed, wheat farms multiplied and, eventually, when roads were paved and consolidated, Montana’s US Highway 2 was established. Today, when people refer to the Hi-Line, they don’t just mean a strip of pavement; rather, the name refers to an area that encompasses the road, railroad and nearby farms, ranches, homes, businesses and communities.
At Shelby, after peering through some of its windows, it became clear that the Marias Museum of History and Art is closed. But a nearby resident who was out in his yard referred me to his neighbor, whose wife’s family knew someone from the museum. At some point, the neighbor’s wife had the phone number of Tracy Dumas, a museum guide. Mr. Dumas’s wife, Lunaanswered the phone call from the neighbor’s husband and explained that Mr. Dumas was mowing the lawn, which was exactly what Mrs. Dumas wanted. He was ready to do it.
Thirty minutes later, during a break from his yard work, Mr. Dumas, who has lived in Shelby all his life — “I’m either tough or dumb,” he says — let me into the museum. The collection includes homesteading memorabilia; boxing gloves belonging to Tommy Gibbons, a contender in Shelby’s 1923 world heavyweight title bout against Jack Dempsey; and a reptile display put on by renowned paleontologist Jack Horner, a Shelby native who served as a consultant on many of the “Jurassic Park” films.
Leaving Shelby, heading east, I watched the sun light up the Sweet Grass Hills, three low volcanic mountains sacred to the Blackfeet Nation, whose reservation borders Glacier National Park. (The community lost its longtime and influential leader, Earl Old Person, in 2021.)
As I turned onto Tiber Road, towards Lake Elwell, I remembered the dreaded question I had been asked that day: “Can you drive on a gravel road?”
Of course I know how to drive on a gravel road, I thought. I’ve lived in Bozeman for 29 years — though it’s been a long time since I changed a tire.
The 15-mile stretch redefined the “gravel road.” What followed was bumpy, barren, dreary, dusty, hot, lonely and relentless. When I finally caught a glimpse of the lake, I mistook it for a mirage. As I got closer, I realized that the clear bright green water and surrounding sandstone and shale formations were real.
Back on the paved road in Inverness, about 35 miles northeast of the lake, I discovered the Inverness Bar and Supper Club, where one of the owners, Shawn Byxbe, took turns tending bar with Dalton Dahlke, his 91-year-old father, as locals talk about things like the weather, “summer fallow” — a period when cropland is deliberately withheld from work to allow it to rest — and high school sporting events.
“The supper club hasn’t changed since I was a little kid,” said 36-year-old Conrad Wendland, a fifth-generation Rudyard farmer who spent the off-season in Los Angeles working for a film crew. In February, he bought the Hi-Line Theater, a small movie establishment in Rudyard, six miles east of Inverness.
“The theater is special because it is almost as it was when it opened in 1949,” explained Mr. Wendland. In fact, many areas on the Hi-Line haven’t changed over the years, he said.
On his family’s farm, Mr. Wendland and his father currently grow winter and spring wheat with the goal of diversifying their crops. It is a dryland farming area, he said, meaning farmers do not use irrigation to help water their crops. Instead, he explained, they use all kinds of methods and strategies to optimize growing conditions: plowing, fertilizing, spraying, resting and rotating crops.
But with all the variables – weather, market prices, world events and non-stop physical exertion – this work is not for the faint of heart. “Despite all the challenges, I fell in love with farming in a way I never fully expected,” says Mr. Wendland.
When I asked Ray Lipp, a 47-year-old crop insurance agent who lives in the town of Hingham, seven miles east of Rudyard, about farming on the Hi-Line, he said, “We’re always moaning and groaning: This is too wet. or it’s too dry or this or this.”
He sent me off to find a song by Wylie Gustafson called “Dry Land Farm.”
“All the neighbors’ fields are rained on, but I don’t get a drop on me,” goes the song.
“Yes, things are cool for every fool but the man on the dry land farm.”
The scenery here is very wide, Mr.’s wife explained. Joanie Lipp, and the sky is so big and boundless, that a farmer can see a potentially devastating storm from miles away, possibly hours before it hits his property — and sometimes in just inside. time to secure last-minute crop insurance.
Storms, Mr. Lipp said, usually occur in June and July, in the late afternoon or early evening. Every storm is different; some a mile wide, some 10. “But so many of them, in the air, they just knock everything to the ground.”
A lot of farming is gambling, he said. People expect that they will continue and earn enough to start a business next year.
“This is ‘next year’ country,” said Mrs. lips
The next morning, I arrived in the city of Havre — 35 miles east of Hingham — to meet David Sageser at the local mall for a tour of Wahkpa Chu’gn Buffalo Jump. I will soon be driving through tribal lands, and this is an opportunity to learn about the historical culture.
Mr. started The tour was a breeze as we walked through the mall’s fluorescent-lit hallways toward the back exit. Moments later, to my surprise and delight, we stood at an interpretive panel in front of a beautiful landscape: wild grasslands, majestic badlands and the iconic Milk River.
The Wahkpa Chu’gn Buffalo Jump was rediscovered in 1961 by budding archaeologist John Brumley, who 14 years old at the time. About 2,000 years ago, the site was used to harvest bison by Native people who hunted the animals by guiding them down a blind ravine.
Mr. finished Sageser our tour of Havre’s H. Earl Clack Museum, where I marveled at 75-million-year-old dinosaur eggs and embryos. A few blocks away, Havre Beneath the Streets offers a fascinating look at the businesses — including a saloon, a brothel and an opium den — that moved underground after a city-wide fire in 1904.
In Chinook, about 25 miles east of Havre, I visited the Blaine County Museum to watch “Forty Miles From Freedom,” a short multimedia piece about the history of the Nez Perce War. Later, on the 67-mile trip to Malta, my final destination on the Hi-Line, I had time to reflect on Chief Joseph’s eloquence on October 5, 1877, as he surrendered near the Bears Paw Mountains: “Listen to me, my leaders. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun is now, I will not fight forever!”
While driving to Central Avenue, my phone rang. My 15-year-old son is calling, looking for his learner’s driver’s permit. Our conversation reminded me of the long journey back ahead of me. But first, stop at Coffee Centralwhere I chatted briefly with some locals.
In addition to his role as a coffee shop barista, Tyler Arnold is a pharmacy technician at a drugstore a block away. Mr. Arnold grew up on the Arnold Ranch, a ranch about 70 miles from Malta. Unlike Mr. Wendland’s farm in Rudyard, the Arnold Ranch uses irrigation to help water its crops.
In a phone conversation after we met, Mr. Arnold talked about the family establishment and recent ranching conditions in the Malta area, which has experienced a drought for the past five years. “And now the grasshoppers, which thrive in dry conditions, are the worst they’ve been in years,” Mr. Arnold said. “They eat more crops than we can grow — and that goes for a lot of farmers and ranchers around here, unfortunately.”
Sipping coffee at a table near the counter, Dyllan Herman told me he moved to Malta from Billings in April. “I always wanted to live in a small town and have my own business,” he said. “I like the quiet of a small town — and there’s good fishing at Nelson Reservoir.”
Another woman in the coffee shop invited me to a fund-raising event down the street for a high school basketball alumnus fighting cancer.
The woman had recently lost her husband and daughter, and believed that the loss of life came in “clusters.”
“You have to hold on to what you’ve got,” he said.
With that in mind, I headed home to Bozeman.
Janie Osborne is a photographer and writer based in Bozeman, Mont. You can follow his work at Instagram.
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