4 Best Sights in Havre, Billings, Little Big Horn, and the Montana Plains

Set in the ancient Bears Paw Mountains, about 10 miles south of town, is the 10,000-acre Beaver Creek Park, the largest county park in the country. It's a favorite spot for locals, who come here to fish in the two lakes and winding Beaver Creek, camp, picnic, and enjoy the grassy foothills and timbered ridges of this island mountain range surrounded by dryland wheat fields.

Once the largest military reservation west of the Mississippi, Fort Assinniboine was established in 1879 in the aftermath of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. At its peak, the fort had more than 100 brick and stone buildings and nearly 500 men. The soldiers stationed here brought along their families, who lived on the post. As a result, the Victorian-era fort became a cultural center as well as a military one, hosting plays and dances along with parades and training exercises. The fort is now a museum, and many of the imposing buildings still stand, although they appear eerily deserted. In fact, a few are storage or administrative facilities for the Northern Research Agricultural Center. Others are open to public tours, which begin at the H. Earl Clack Memorial Museum.

Displays at the H. Earl Clack Memorial Museum include murals, artifacts, dioramas, and military exhibits that explore the lives of Plains Indians and Havre's early settlers and ranchers. The museum arranges tours of Fort Assinniboine and the Wahkpa Chu'gn Archaeological Site, a major buffalo jump.

A tour of Havre Beneath the Streets takes you to a bordello, an opium den, a bakery, and other stops in an underground business center dating from the early days of the frontier—the equivalent of a modern underground mall. The subterranean businesses were mainly built and operated by the town's Asian population, drawn to the area by the Great Northern Railroad and its attendant business opportunities. Reservations for tours are recommended.