US-89: The Rocky Mountain Front

The Route at a Glance

US-89 leaves Browning, the Blackfeet Nation's capital, past the Museum of the Plains Indian, built with New Deal money and dedicated on June 29, 1941, for the Blackfeet and the other Plains nations to show and sell their own work. South of town the highway runs the edge of the reservation, with the mountains of the Badger-Two Medicine off to the west, then crosses Birch Creek, the reservation's southern line, into ranch country.

The Front is one of the few places left where grizzly bears come down out of the mountains onto open plains. West of Choteau, the Nature Conservancy began buying ranch land in 1979 and has assembled the 13,000-acre Pine Butte Swamp Preserve, the largest wetland on the Front, where bears feed in spring while snow still covers the high country. The Old North Trail, a path Native people walked along the mountains for thousands of years, crosses it. Stay in the car when a bear is near the road.

Choteau was the home of A. B. Guthrie Jr., whose 1947 novel The Big Sky gave Montana its nickname. His stand for the grizzly set him against many of his ranching neighbors, and a year before his death in 1991 he gave land to the Pine Butte preserve; his ashes were scattered on Ear Mountain, the peak west of town. South of Choteau the route turns onto US-287 for Augusta, a ranch town at the foot of the Sun River country, where gravel roads run west toward the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

The Drive, Stop by Stop

1 stops along the route, in driving order from Browning, Montana to Augusta, Montana.

1. 1

   Museum of the Plains Indian

   Browning

   The start, at the US-2 and US-89 junction on Browning's west side; closed weekends.

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That's the drive. Take your time, pull over often, and let US-89: The Rocky Mountain Front do what it does best.