The Yellowstone River: The Last Free River

The river running along the south edge of Billings is one of the longest free-flowing rivers in the contiguous United States. The Yellowstone has no major dam on its main stem from Yellowstone National Park to its confluence with the Missouri River in North Dakota, roughly six hundred seventy miles of unimpounded water. In a country where virtually every significant river has been dammed at least once, that is a remarkable fact.

The Yellowstone shaped everything here. The Apsaalooke built their world around it. William Clark followed it downstream on his return from the Pacific in eighteen oh six. The Northern Pacific surveyors chose the valley because a river meant flat terrain and water for steam engines. The refineries and the sugar factory needed its water. The Huntley Irrigation Project diverted it. The city of Billings draws from it.

The river also floods. The Yellowstone is a snowmelt river, rising fast in May and June when the mountains above Yellowstone National Park begin to drain. In flood years, the river has reached the base of the rimrocks on the north bank, covering the valley floor that the railroad once celebrated as ideally flat for settlement.

The Clark's Fork of the Yellowstone joins the main stem about two miles southeast of Laurel, just upstream from Billings. It carries water from the Beartooth Mountains, from near Montana's highest point at Granite Peak. The entire watershed above this city is mountain country. What runs through Billings is the product of snowfields and high-country drainage that begins a hundred miles away and several thousand feet higher.