Judith Gap, Montana

The opening in the ridgeline ahead is the Judith Gap, a natural passage between the Big Snowy Mountains to the east and the Little Belt Mountains to the west. Chief Joseph led the Nez Perce through this gap in the summer of eighteen seventy-seven during their thousand-mile flight toward Canada. Settlers followed the same corridor, and a small town named Judith Gap grew up on the far side.

The gap does more than move people. It funnels wind from the Judith Basin to the north with enough force and consistency to power one of Montana's first large-scale wind farms. Ninety turbines went up on these plains in two thousand five, each tower rising two hundred sixty-two feet above fields where wheat and sheep share the ground with the turbine bases. The Judith Gap Wind Farm was among Montana's first commercial-scale wind projects and remains a landmark of the state's transition toward renewable energy.