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Montana, United States
Photo: Forest Service Northern Region from Missoula, MT, USA, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Southwest Montana is what many people think of when they imagine Montana: rugged, mountainous and interspersed with clear rivers and streams. Ranchers still ride horses and elk and bear wander the mountains. This is also Montana's gold country, where Old West prospectors repeatedly struck it rich.
By foot
The Continental Divide Trail is a National Scenic Trail running 3,100 miles between Mexico and Canada.
By plane
The commercial airports are Bert Mooney Airport (Butte) (BTM) and Helena Regional Airport (HLN).
Like the rest of Montana, this region is vast with gas stations sometimes great distances apart, so plan accordingly.
Read in the guideChoose an airport to see hotels, stations, taxi ranks and car rental desks around it.
Butte · Regional · BTM
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Helena is the state capital of Montana, in the Western Central part of the state. Visitors come to see Helena’s historic Last Chance Gulch, and its mansion district once home to Helena’s gold mining millionaires.
Anaconda is a city of about 9,400 people (2020) in southwestern Montana. It is in a valley of the Deer Lodge National Forest, giving impressive views and plenty of nearby outdoor activities.
Butte in southwest Montana, "The Richest Hill on Earth" from around 1880 to 1920, was the largest and most notorious copper boom town in the American West, home to hundreds of saloons and a famous red-light district. The city still flaunts its legacy of industry, wealth and squalor.
Deer Lodge is a town in southwestern Montana. About 3,000 people live there.
Dillon is a city in Southwest Montana. In 2020, about 3,800 people lived there.
Nevada City is in southwest Montana. It is considered a ghost town.
Philipsburg is a town of about 800 people (2020) in southwestern Montana, originally formed around an ore smelter in 1867. The surrounding county is home to more than 24 ghost towns.
Townsend is a town in Montana. It is the county seat of Broadwater County and about 1,700 people live there.
Virginia City is a small town (most definitely not a 'city'!) in southwest Montana. When gold was discovered nearby in Alder Creek, it became a "Wild West" boomtown in the ensuing gold rush.
Wolf Creek is an extremely small town in Montana. According to the 2020 census, only 25 people live there.
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