Missouri River Country & Fort Peck Lake

North-east Montana's prairie and badlands, Fort Peck Lake with a shoreline longer than California's coast, and the Hi-Line towns of Glasgow, Malta and Wolf Point.

Missouri River Country is Montana's emptiest corner: rolling prairie, wheat farms and badlands along the Missouri River, with small railway towns strung along US 2, the Hi-Line. In 2018 an analysis of travel times named Glasgow, the main town, the middle of nowhere of the lower 48 states. It is a region for open space, hunting, fishing and fossils rather than famous sights. Its centrepiece is Fort Peck Lake, created by Fort Peck Dam, built by the US Army Corps of Engineers in the 1930s. The dam is the highest of the six major dams on the Missouri River and the largest hydraulically filled dam in the United States. The lake behind it stretches 134 miles, with about 1,520 miles of shoreline, longer than the coast of California, and lies inside the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. The town of Fort Peck, about 20 miles south of Glasgow, was built to house the dam workers. Much of the Montana Dinosaur Trail runs through this region. The badlands around Jordan, in Garfield County, are part of the Hell Creek Formation, where Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops fossils have been found, and several small museums along the trail show local finds. On the North Dakota border, Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site reconstructs the most important fur-trading post on the upper Missouri. Amtrak's Empire Builder stops at Glasgow, Malta and Wolf Point. Summer is the best time to visit; autumn draws hunters.