Distinctly Montana Magazine

90 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G 2 0 2 5 second largest city in the county. The only other city in the coun- ty is Three Forks with a 2020 population of 1,989. Three Forks, of course, takes its name from the Three Forks of the Missouri River located just a few miles north of the city. Gallatin County has two towns: Manhattan and West Yellow- stone. Manhattan is a farming community west of Bozeman, just off Interstate 90. Prior to Prohibition it had the largest barley malting facility between Chicago and the coast. It's possibly best known to television viewers from the '90s Montana beef produc- ers' commercial: "Beef. It's what's for dinner in Manhattan… Montana!". The town's 2020 population was 2,086. With a 2020 population of 1,272, West Yellowstone, as should be obvious, is the western entrance to Yellowstone National Park. A long, narrow strip of Gallatin County reaches south from Interstate 90 to the Idaho line. And that's how you get to West Yellowstone. Travelers will find accommodation, lots of food ser- vices, touring opportunities, and a beautiful building built by the Union Pacific Railroad when they ran trains into the area. Today it serves as the Museum of the Yellowstone. There are at least a dozen census-designated places around Gallatin County, the largest of which is called Four Corners. Now, I've been to Four Corners many times and I would be hard pressed to tell you where Bozeman ends and Four Corners starts. Be that as it may, the 2020 population of Four Corners was 5,901. The second largest census-designated area is the Community of Big Sky. That is the residential area of Chet Huntley's Big Sky Ski Resort south of Bozeman. 3,591 people called Big Sky home. And that doesn't include the people that they have working for them who have to commute miles and miles just to find a place cheap enough to rent. The other census-designated places are small farming communities scattered around the county. The Natives' Valley of Flowers proved to be prime agricultur- al land. Sheltered by the Bridger Range to the north, the Galla- tin Range to the south and east, and the Madison Range to the southwest, the bowl thus formed provided sites to lay down roots and build farms. Dutch settlers in the Manhattan/Amsterdam/ Churchill area planted so much barley that they had to build one August 1 - 3, 2025 $30 EARLYBIRD PRICING UNTIL JULY 1 • KIDS 12 & UNDER FREE (406) 224-8450 YellowstoneTipis.com 50 Jardine Road Gardiner, Montana YELLOWSTONE TIPIS N O M I N AT E U S F O R A C H A N C E TO W I N $1 0 0 0 2022-24 o f BEST M O N TA N A A S V O T E D B Y R E A D E R S O F W I N N E R ! Y E A R S WO N

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