National parks in Montana

Summer view of the Yellowtail Dam from the Ok-A-Beh road.

100ESSENTIAL Sharron Genaux

National Recreation Area · MT

Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area

Bighorn Canyon is a genuinely underrated recreation powerhouse straddling Montana and Wyoming, where a deep reservoir carved through dramatic canyon walls anchors an almost absurd range of activities.

Large mountains dotted with snow loom above a rocky meadow filled with yellow flowers.

90ESSENTIAL NPS Photo

National Park · MT

Glacier National Park

Glacier is one of the few parks that genuinely earns the word 'spectacular' without apology.

A geyser erupts steam in front of the bright sun.

90ESSENTIAL NPS / Jacob W. Frank

National Park · ID

Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone is not just a great national park, it is a category unto itself.

Multiple tepee poles and a river are silhouetted against a dawn sky.

88ESSENTIAL NPS Photo

National Battlefield · MT

Big Hole National Battlefield

Big Hole is one of the most sobering sites in the national park system, full stop.

83EXCELLENT NPS Photo

National Historical Park · ID

Nez Perce National Historical Park

Nez Perce National Historical Park is unlike almost any other unit in the system: 38 separate sites scattered across four states, free to enter, and built around one of the most consequential and underrepresented stories in American history.

Small waterfall with brown rocks and green moss

74EXCELLENT NPS Photo / Alex Wiles

National Historic Trail · IA

Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail

At nearly 4,900 miles across 16 states, this is less a destination than a framework for road-tripping American history.

View from Missouri River bottoms of Southwest bastion

66WORTH IT NPS Photo / Kris Baxter

National Historic Site · MT

Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site

Fort Union is a genuinely undervisited gem sitting on the Montana-North Dakota border where the fur trade era comes alive in concrete, human terms.

56WORTH IT NPS Photo

National Historic Site · MT

Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site

Grant-Kohrs Ranch is a genuinely underrated slice of Montana history, preserving the actual headquarters of what was once a 10-million-acre cattle operation.

The sun sets behind the Indian Memorial.

49NICHE NPS photo

National Monument · MT

Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument

Little Bighorn is a compact but genuinely sobering historical site where the 1876 battle between Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors and the 7th Cavalry is presented with real moral complexity.

Green Monarch Ridge by Lake Pend Oreille ID

38NICHE NPS Photo

National Geologic Trail · WA

Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail

This is not a park you visit so much as a region you decode.