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The stars shine above a camper parked at Hell Creek State Park in Garfield County in June 2021. Stargazing around Fort Peck Reservoir is another way for recreationists to enjoy the remote location.
When was the last time you looked at the stars? Not as an ancillary thing, but as the main attraction. Just gazing heavenward and wondering, letting your eyes adjust to the darkness until you start to pick out the small details, like the way the Milky Way just glows, or the crispness of the constellations.
It’s been a while, right? So much of childhood is spent looking up, but adulthood is all looking forward. No time to gawk.
That’s what Montana’s Trail to the Stars is trying to fix. It’s a list of places, 43 in all, that are accessible places to find dark skies throughout Montana. It lists the spots, as well as what amenities are available there, be they camping, public bathrooms, power hookups and the like. The list and an interactive map are at trailtothestars.com. The website also has viewing tips, a list of related programs and more.
Sunset turns Medicine Rocks State Park into a whole other place, with eerie shadows and lighting conditions.
“These are the darkest skies in Eastern Montana,” said Carla Hunsley, the executive director of Montana’s Missouri River Country and one of the people behind Montana’s Trail to the Stars. And she means dark as a compliment.
The map stretches across most of Central and Eastern Montana, from JJJ Wilderness Ranch in Teton County near Augusta to Brush Lake State Park in Sheridan County, between Dagmar and the North Dakota border.
The distance between those two points is, fittingly, about 406 miles. And between them there’s a lot of dark sky to go around.
Views like this, with the Milky Way stretched out above the Montana landscape, are easier to find now thanks to Montana's Trail to the Stars.
The spots, which were picked out by various Montana tourism boards, run the gamut from well-known areas like Makoshika State Park and the Upper Missouri Breaks to little visited hideaways like Lantis Spring, a five-spot campground hidden away in Carter County.
Lantis Spring is particularly special to Sabre Moore, who is the director of the Carter County Museum in Ekalaka and sits on the Visit Southeast Montana tourism board.
“You’ve got sweeping views of the entire Carter County,” she said, “and it’s named after an old homesteader. There’s even apple trees on the property.”
The places picked needed to have a few things. Nearly non-existent light pollution is perhaps the most obvious, but accessibility is another valued component.
Montana's Trail to the Stars is a list of 43 spots in Eastern and Central Montana that are accessible places to view the night sky as clearly as possible.
“We were very concerned with people being able to access the sites, at night, year round. So ideally there’s a good road available. And public bathrooms. That’s your concern with travelers,” Moore said.
They also looked for campgrounds where people could stay the night and stare at the sky, like Red Shale Campground near Ashland, or Wood Bottom Campground, outside of Loma on the Missouri River.
That river, Eastern Montana’s most notable water artery, is dotted with stops along the Trail to the Stars, including a collection around Fort Peck Reservoir, highlighted by Nelson Creek, which Hunsley singled out as a favorite spot.
“It’s just super dark,” she said. “There’s just nothing there.”
The Acton Recreation Area north of Billings is one of the spots on Montana's Trail to the Stars.
The closest spot to Billings is the Acton Recreation Area, about 25 miles north of town. It’s a refuge of dark skies within a half hour drive from Montana’s largest city.
But the best spot for Montana skies might be Medicine Rocks State Park, just north of Ekalaka. Its giant, pockmarked sandstone hoodoos play along with the shadows and different light conditioned sky during the day. But after dark, it turns into something else, a chance to see the sky as it once was, like when Teddy Roosevelt visited in 1883, calling the spot “as fantastically beautiful a place as I have ever seen.” Medicine Rocks was declared an International Dark Sky Sanctuary in 2020, alongside Glacier National Park as one of the only two such sites in Montana.
At Medicine Rocks State Park, watching the way the sky interacts with the great sandstone hoodoos is one of the key attractions.
“We’re trying to gain an appreciation for dark skies,” said Moore. “A lot of people in Montana are very lucky to have grown up with sight of the Milky Way, and to be able to see the constellations as a lot of our ancestors used to. But that is frequently not the case, especially in urban centers.”
Eastern and Central Montana, with their low population and big, wide open spaces naturally lend themselves to that.
There’s altruism here, a real desire to highlight some unheralded gems in Montana, and give recreationists yet another thing to do in their own backyards.
But tourism is another big driving force behind Montana’s Trail to the Stars.
They call it “astrotourism,” and it’s a booming industry. People are willing to come a long way to see a really dark sky.
“A lot of [the idea behind Montana’s Trail to the Stars] came from us looking at other state’s that had really successful dark sky tourism programs,” said Moore.
She said she gets visitors from Europe, especially Italy. “They frequently plan their trips around sites that are where they can see the stars.”
Amid sky high gas prices and historically bad inflation, the summer tourism season in Montana has been a bit subdued, amplified by the closure of roads in and around Yellowstone.
Montana’s Trail to the Stars gives visitors a data base of spots to visit, and hopefully will help drive up one of Montana’s most important money makers.
“We do have the darkest skies,” said Hunsley, “and we want to put that out there for people to be able to visit. And we’re not just looking at tourists, we’re thinking that families can come out here. It’s just one more thing to do in our area.”
There are 43 stops on Montana’s Trail to the Stars now, but expect the list to grow.
“We look forward to all these sites adding more and more public programming as well,” Moore said. “The events you see, they’re just going to get bigger and better and we’ll have a lot more of them.”
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The stars shine above a camper parked at Hell Creek State Park in Garfield County in June 2021. Stargazing around Fort Peck Reservoir is another way for recreationists to enjoy the remote location.
Montana's Trail to the Stars is a list of 43 spots in Eastern and Central Montana that are accessible places to view the night sky as clearly as possible.
Sunset turns Medicine Rocks State Park into a whole other place, with eerie shadows and lighting conditions.
Views like this, with the Milky Way stretched out above the Montana landscape, are easier to find now thanks to Montana's Trail to the Stars.
The Acton Recreation Area north of Billings is one of the spots on Montana's Trail to the Stars.
At Medicine Rocks State Park, watching the way the sky interacts with the great sandstone hoodoos is one of the key attractions.
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